“We had three strikes which were more locally organized and we are having a national strike now, organized by the common front of three unions in Belgium. I think that the national strike that started this morning and is still ongoing is a success,” Dirk Mertens from the CGSLB said.
On Monday, Belgium was paralyzed by a national strike which grounded all flights to and from the country, froze railroad communications and halted all public transportation across the country.
The strikers are pressuring the Belgium government not to increase the retirement age from 65 to 67 by 2030 as well as to keep the customary cost-of-living wage increases –promises made by Belgium’s new government before the elections held earlier this year and now apparently broken.
“We expect them to at least accomplish the promises that they [the government] made before the elections. One thing that they should restore is the adaptation [of wages] to the inflation. They should keep the retirement age intact,” Mertens told Sputnik.
He added that despite many saying that the strike would be useless, the scale of the protest is immense and has involved the entire country, and thousands of people did not show up at work on Monday. Mertens also underlined that if the government sticks to its pre-election promises, it will only strengthen its position in Belgium, showing that it respects its its citizens.
“I think that by doing so [addressing the grievances] the government will show that it protects its own citizens, the workers and that they have good-will, it will be a powerful symbol of government doing what they say,” Dirk Mertens said.
Belgium’s new government headed by Prime Minister Charles Michel has been pushing plans to save 11 billion euros ($13.7 billion) over the next five years and mulled a retirement age increase, as well as scrapping a usually automatic cost-of-living raise next year. The new government was formed in October, five months after the elections took place.
