Dear Comrades, brothers and sisters
On behalf of the leadership of the WFTU I transmit to you and, through you, to the pensioners all over the world, class militant greetings.
First of all, allow me to congratulate the leadership of the TUI P&R for the realization of its 3rd Regular Congress as well as for the preparatory work that has been done with the holding of several regional and local meetings through which a rich, democratic, and free discussion was held, underlining the challenges, anxieties, and priorities of the thriving and vibrant movement of the pensioners.
Moreover, Ι would particularly like to thank the Greek pensioners, as well as PAME that supports them, for hosting this event and creating the right conditions for this conference to be successful in every aspect.
The WFTU is proud to have in its ranks the Pensioners’ UIS, which brings together class organizations and pensioners’ militants from all corners of the planet and is in constant mobilization and demand. Because our retired veterans have made an invaluable contribution to society and undoubtedly deserve much more than they currently enjoy.
Your congress is taking place in a period that the nature of imperialism is once again revealed in all its hypocrisy, cynicism, and inhumanity. The massacre and genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza continue unabated and this heinous crime is being shamefully attempted to be presented as Israel’s right of self-defense.
Right of self-defense of whom? A state that for decades has illegally occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories by the force of arms, that has uprooted and displaced millions of people out of their homes and land, that denies the Palestinians the right to have their own independent state and continues the settlements, murders, and arrests, establishing in practice an Apartheid regime.
WFTU from the very first moment, stood by the Palestinian people and highlighted the real cause of instability, violence, and unrest in Palestine and the wider Middle East, which is none other than the Israeli occupation and settlements, the usurpation of the rights of the Palestinian people that has been going on for decades.
We demand justice and freedom for Palestine, immediate ceasefire, and the creation of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
We are proud that millions of workers in tens of countries around the world are mobilizing, with the WFTU flags, in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
I regret to say that within the International Trade Union Movement, not everyone can feel proud. Unfortunately, some have lost their voice and remain silent in the face of this crime. They insist on an equal distance stance and their ‘yes, but’ positions, equating the perpetrators with the victims.
For WFTU which born in the ashes of world war the struggle for peace is inherent and integrated with the broader struggles of the labor movement for a better world. It is obvious that the world peace is threatened. We demand an end to NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine, which they maintain by all means, and to replace weapons with diplomacy. For us the struggle for peace has a specific content. It means first and foremost a struggle for the dismantling of NATO and all military coalitions, a struggle to defend the right of every people to choose the path of their economic and social development without interventions, sanctions, blockades, and economic wars. Against the double-standards policy where international law ends up being in practice the law of the strong.
Dear comrades, brothers and sisters
We live in a period that the crisis of capitalism is generalized and deepens, social inequalities exploitation and poverty are widening dramatically.
The high cost of living is brutally undermining workers’ and pensioners living standards. The right to organize and collective bargaining are under attack.
Individual contracts, privatizations, outsourcing, teleworking and “service leasing” are just some of the forms taken by this harsh neoliberal attack.
Major social achievements such as social security and public health care are being privatized, while the authoritarian and arbitrary increase of the retirement age continues methodically.
With public money, they save the banks and strengthen big capital, without caring at the same time about the dramatic expansion of poverty and social inequality. Large groups of the population, especially the most vulnerable, such as pensioners, are pushed even further into misery, abandonment and social marginalization.
The workers and pensioners do not passively accept the neoliberal capitalist, anti-grassroots, and anti-worker attacks.
With militant mobilizations in all corners of the globe, they demand the satisfaction of their contemporary needs. Social security, health and safety conditions at work, free and universal public education, dignified life for pensioners and the elderly, and possibilities of creative and quality leisure.
The sharpening of state repression and authoritarianism is the response of the bourgeois governments to the just popular demands; unfortunately, very often under the cooperation or tolerance of surrendered trade union leaders along with yellow unions.
Dear Comrades,
Just few weeks ago the presidential Council of WFTU had its annual meeting in Sao Paolo where estimated our action and collectively decided about our plan for the next year.
In 2023 we had implemented successfully a rich action plan after a fairly long period of mandatory restrictions on our activities due to the COVID pandemic.
Our ambition for the 2024 action, is to be even rich and more multilayered, to develop dynamically the coordination and guidance of the struggles, the expression of solidarity and internationalism, the dissemination of information, the intervention in international organizations and especially in the ILO, the continuous upgrading of the educational work within the workers and of course the organizational development and the expansion of the prestige and influence of the International class oriented movement.
An important development in the field of trade union education, is the initiative of creating the International Labor Institute, by old distinguished WFTU cadres as well as scientists and academics linked to the class-oriented trade union movement. With this Institute the WFTU will have a close cooperation to upgrade the WFTU’s educational activity.
There is no doubt that TUI’s action must remain at the center of our attention. Through this action we come closer to the contemporary needs and daily struggles of the workers in the sectors they work in. Closer to the demands for work regulated by collective agreements and for guaranteed labor rights and trade union freedoms.
Dear comrades, brothers and sisters
Workers and pensioners march together, shoulder to shoulder in the struggles for a better world without wars or imperialist interventions, without social marginalization, without discrimination of any kind and without exploitation of man and man.
The International Class-oriented Trade Union Movement, is firmly on your side and fights with you in the great trade union battle for pensions. Against the privatization of social security and the arbitrary and autocratic increase of retirement limits. For the right of pensioners to a dignified life, housing, food, health, culture and leisure with an adequate level of quality.
On behalf of more than 105 million members from 133 countries in all corners of the world, I wish every success in the work of your congress and in your struggles to defend and expand the rights and improve the quality of life of pensioners around the world.
The system that generates crisis and reproduces exploitation can be defeated.
The weapon of the working class is solidarity and internationalism. For those who resist, who do not com promise with oppression, discrimination and exploitation there is only one path of dignity, the path of struggles.
Long live the Trade Union Class Struggles
Long live solidarity and internationalism
