Oct. 15 () –
Pensioners from different autonomous communities have demonstrated this Saturday in Madrid to demand the revaluation of pensions with respect to the increase in the annual accumulated CPI and a minimum pension of 60% of the average salary.
A total of 15,000 protesters, according to figures from the Government delegation in Madrid, have walked the streets of Madrid this afternoon from Plaza de Neptuno to Callao carrying banners with messages such as “Fair pension, now” or “The pension, my right” .
The spokesman for the General Coordinator of Pensioners, Leopoldo Pelayo, has criticized that pensioners lose purchasing power “constantly” and that they are in an “unsustainable” situation, since they suffer “continuous cuts” by the Government.
Among the different convening platforms are organizations of pensioners from Galicia, Andalusia, Extremadura, the Basque Country and Madrid, as well as the State Coordinator for the Defense of the Public Pension System (Coespe), the Association for Early Retirement without Penalizing (Asjubi40) and the General Confederation of Labor (CGT).
The convening pensioners’ associations denounce that while some communities are lowering taxes, such as Patrimony, the minimum and non-contributory pensions are “misery.”
In addition to demanding the revaluation of pensions with the CPI, they request an audit of the Social Security accounts and show their “rejection of the privatization of the public pension system.”
They also remember that pensions lost 3% of purchasing power in 2021 and that salaries and pensions are losing more than six points of purchasing power in the course of 2022.
“The fundamental cause of the increase in prices is not wages or pensions: they are those who, in a monopoly regime, set prices to maintain and increase their outrageous benefits,” the organizers denounce.
“We will continue in the street until we reverse the counter-reforms that are being imposed on us, end the gender gap in salaries and pensions, eliminate the penalty for early pensions with long contribution careers, recover the rights lost in the successive labor and pension reforms , generate an equitable distribution of wealth and improve and guarantee universal and quality public and community services”, they warn.
SUPPORT FROM UNITED WE CAN AND THE UNITED LEFT
In addition, members of parties such as United We Can or Izquierda Unida have attended the demonstration in support of pensioners. The deputy for Unidas Podemos and spokesperson for Podemos, Javier Sánchez Serna, has assured that during these years they have “fought very hard” to have their demands reflected in both the BOE and the Budgets.
For his part, the state councilor of Podemos, Roberto Sotomayor, has criticized that the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, advocate “a pension plan public, guaranteed and of quality”.
Likewise, the head of the Red de Pensionistas de Izquierda Unida, Sole Ruiz, has focused on the “gender gap” of pensioners: “We have to fight to shorten it and we have to claim that many women have worked in the black, having a double function, working at home and outside”.
