On Friday, December 15 took place in Athens National Demonstration of Pensioners with thousands of Pensioners coming to demonstrate in front of the Greek Parliament from all over the country. The pensioners declared in their statement:
“We defend our pensions, our rights that we paid them with the work of our lives and we do not owe them. The government, using alibis massacres our pensions and launches new propaganda tactics to hide the new deadly cuts, the new stealing it prepares, by recalculating and cutting the pensions into principal and supplementary pensions, by abolishing all kinds of social benefits and care, imposing heavier taxation, by reducing the tax-free rate.
The new budget for 2018 gives a new hit to the people’s right to Health – Care. Reduced funds are provided for Health, public hospitals and institutions, medical and medication cut of 350 million Euros. These, along with the new cuts in our pensions, in salaries, show that the misery of pensioners, workers and the people is the basic precondition of their business groups and governments. They are literally throwing us to die for the profits of the few. This is the character of their “growth”.
We are on the path of struggle, because we believe that with the wealth we produce, we and our children can also live better, and they are sacrificed on the altar of profit with unemployment, starvation salaries and slave labor relations.
We can defeat and overthrow their anti-labor policies, defeating the fear, the indifference, the deadly logic deliberately cultivating the forces of the system that nothing can be done. We can defeat them by entering more massively-fighting into the struggle. We claim what they have taken from us with violence. We demand our pensions, our rights to Social Security.
We demand:
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Immediate payment to all pensioners of our holiday pensions.
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Immediate payment of all principal and supplementary pensions
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Recapitalisations of our insurance funds.
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Cancelation of all cuts in primary and supplementary pensions.
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Cancelation of all anti-workers’ laws and reestablishment of what has been removed.
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We denounce and oppose the new deadly cuts for the people in the state budget for the year 2018.
We participate and support the militant mobilizations of the workers’ movement. Our struggle is common. We do not surrender them our pensions – We do not surrender them our health – We want to live with dignity – We paid for it- we are entitled to it- we demand it.”
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