Brussels, 10/04/2003 (Agence Europe) - Trade unions and professional associations (OSP, the Alliance confédéral des syndicats libres, the Confédération syndicale européenne and the Union syndicale fédérale) have called on the European institutions' officials to strike on Friday to protest against the views of eight Member States on pay and pensions aspects of the planned reform of the Terms of Conditions of European public servants. The all-out strike call is expected to be followed by staff at the Commission, the Council and the Economic and Social Committee (European Parliament officials held their strike on Thursday). The Member States in question are Ireland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden the UK and Finland.
Union syndicale says the General Affairs Council's "attacks on the objective method for adjusting pay and pensions" formulated in March 2003 "are provocative, unacceptable and designed to cause conflict" (see Europe of 21 March, p.13). It goes on to explain that "eight national delegations on the Council, which haven't paid their contributions to the pension system for years (it has only been funded by officials) now want to smash the Terms and Conditions in force and increase annuities to make it virtually impossible to obtain a full pension and to undermine the adjustment method that has worked properly to ensure parallel treatment of national trends and has guaranteed social peace in the institutions for more than 20 years".
According to the trade unions, the eight countries' position would have the following negative consequences for staff: 1) Pay. Scrapping the current method that had made it possible to more than double pay in 21 years; introducing a new pay deduction (officials don't want to "pay twice"); and 2) Pensions. Increasing the retirement age to beyond 60; increasing the number of years required to constitute a full 70% pension from 35 to 40; taking into account the last ten years' pay for pension calculations (rather than the final salary); scrapping the annual pension adjustments; scrapping the "corrective coefficient" for all countries; and increasing pension contributions from 8.25% to 10%.