The Association of Bankers of Uruguay (AEBU) will abide by the resolution of the PIT-CNT regarding the collection of signatures and will support the plebiscite against the social security reform, while the union center will present the ballot this Thursday before the Electoral Court.
Despite having rejected the appeal proposed by the Association of Social Security Workers (ATSS) in the Representative Table – which ended up being voted against – AEBU decided to accompany the measure of the union center in view of the next elections in the Uruguay. However, at the beginning of this month, the banking union had been against the plebiscite and even published a document expressing its opposition.
With this, the general secretary of the banking union, Fernando Gambera, assured that they will join the plebiscite of the PIT-CNT and will help them gather signatures. However, he admitted that it will not be an easy task. “It is not easy, nothing is easy when it is difficult to place on the agenda and public conversation, and in the interest of the people, the issues that are not the main ones that we all know that people are most concerned about,” said the representative of AEBU a Underlined.
The PIT-CNT ballot is presented today
This Thursday the union center will present the plebiscite ballot in front of the Electoral Court. Meanwhile, the president of PIT-CNT, Marcelo Abdalawill appear in the building at 2 p.m. at the electoral body.
At the beginning of this month, the union center reached an agreement to propose a single ballot for the plebiscite that promotes against the social security reform.
In the document, the PIT-CNT stated that “individual savings systems for retirement purposes are prohibited,” in reference to the AFAP, by establishing that they must end their activities within a maximum period of two years “from the entry into force of this reform.”
The ballot also proposes that the retirement age be 60 years and establishes that “no retirement or pension may be less than the value of the national minimum wage.” For Abdullah, It is about “defending a social security criterion that helps the redistribution of wealth.”
A change of mind
Before being in favor of the plebiscite, AEBU published a document in which it specified the cons of it. The main complaints on the part of the banking union had to do, in the first place, with the plebiscite “affects the equity and justice in various benefits” since the conditions promoted by the plebiscite allow future governments to “deteriorate the salary conditions of workers, impose worse retirement conditions for important sectors of retirees and will justify new regressive tax burdens.”
Therefore, AEBU established that the reform implicitly included “the confiscation of savings, which belong to BPS affiliates” who are individual account holders and workers who join in the coming months. From the union, they stressed that the plebiscite does not take into account a compensation for that confiscation.
Furthermore, the union established that the plebiscite “is promoted without analysis of the impacts on the state resourcesthe viability of the expansion of other social policies such as health, education or housing and even other branches of social security, the effects on workers and retireesthe levels of injustice that it generates” and that it would not be taken into account that it could generate negative impacts on the economy and the labor market.
On the other hand, they added that the project generates certain uncertainties, impacts fundamental rights, while dissolving private organizations and incorporating limitations to the social protection from some sectors. “It generates benefits not adhered to principles of justice, increases the deficit of the police and military system and funds, and could generate lawsuits against the State of incalculable amounts,” the statement noted.
Source: Ambito
