The general coordinator of LAB, Igor Arroyo, together with Amanda Verrone, the union’s public policy analysis manager, demanded in Bilbao this additional system as a transitional measure towards the formation of a public pension system for Euskal Herria.
The Union LABORATORY has advocated replacing the current complementary model of the Voluntary Social Security Institutions (EPSV) or the occupational pension plans promoted by the Spanish Government with a additional system related to public employmentwhich is managed by the Administration.
The general coordinator of LAB, Igor Arroyotogether with the union’s public policy analysis manager, Amanda Verrone have demanded this complementary system as one in Bilbao transitional measure towards the formation of one public and private pension system for Euskal Herria.
Arroyo has pointed out that in Euskadi “there is an attempt” on the part of employers and the institutional sphere, on the part of the “PNV environment”, to generate “a kind of front in defense of the EPSV”, whose system LAB criticizes , compared to the model that involves “promoting pensions linked to employment from Madrid”, is “even worse”, according to him.
As he warned, LAB “will not be there” and he recalled that the Abertzale union was there decided two years ago to abandon the EPSV management frameworks because their model “has failed because it has not served to dignify the pensions of the people who need them most.”
For Arroyo, the model is “not universal because those most in need of supplementing their pensions have been left out of the system” and is based on the individual capitalization of contributions, which is why it has resulted in yet another financial product.
He has therefore insisted that LAB “will not participate in the expansion of the EPSV model” through collective bargaining, and has warned that there may be “interest” among employers to use this issue as “some sort of” mislead” by proposing this complementary system at the negotiating tables of the agreements, in order not to offer other things such as salary increases.
So is the union in contrast to individual supplementary pensions and defends that they no longer have tax benefits.
Faced with this, LAB defends the articulation of a complementary ‘public, universal and redistributive’ systemarranged through an intersectoral agreement and managed by the government, whereby the employer’s contribution is greater as the employee’s salary is lower.
The union’s proposal is included in the latest publication of “Haritik” which LAB has distributed under the title “Towards a public and private pension system for Euskal Herria”, in which it also defends the immediate transfer of social security management to Euskadi, the introduction of a minimum pension of 1080 euros and the financing of the system through government budgets.
It also demands the introduction of a compensatory pension for care work, to replace the widow’s pension.
According to LAB data, there are more than 200,000 retirees in the Basque Country and Navarra with an income of less than 1,080 euros per month, of whom almost 70% are women.
While the gender pay gap is greater than 21%, the gender gap in pensions is more than 38%, meaning that male pensioners earn on average “517 euros more per month than women”, according to their figures.
Source: EITB
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