QUEBEC CITY — Twelve unions representing 115,000 retirees in this province are banding together to denounce austerity.
“The government has made an offer which is removing a lot of the things we worked for, so to me it’s a quite a blow,” said retiree Ed Zegray.
The Couillard government wants to make indexation conditional, to save about $200 million a year. Retirees argued Monday they need indexation to buy the basics.
The price of food, according to Desjardins, has jumped 25 per cent in the last five years.
“When you are working, part of your salary increase is to cover that. When you’re retired you don’t have a salary increase,” Zegray said.
The Liberals also want to push back the age of retirement to 62, calculate retirement income based on the eight most lucrative years of a worker’s career instead of five, and increase the penalty for early retirement from 4 to 7.2 per cent.
“We will fight this,” added AREQ spokesperson Pierre-Paul Côté.
Unions from all sectors are preparing to hold a giant protest Thursday to disrupt the beginning of the spring session. The protest has been dubbed the “Refuse Austerity” march.
“These cuts have bad consequences on the families, on children, on many people,” said Quebec Solidaire co-leader Françoise David.
The party said it believes it’s only a matter of time before protesters win the public opinion war.
However, a recent Leger poll revealed that a majority of Quebecers agree with the Liberals’ so-called austerity policies.
“The Liberals don’t say to Quebecers, ‘We’re giving billions of dollars of advantages to the very rich.’ They say, ‘This is the only solution,’ so it’s evident people will say, ‘OK, let’s cut that and let’s cut the other thing,'” said Amir Khadir, a Quebec Solidaire MNA.
Political parties expect more special legislations in the months ahead, as the Liberals continue to flex their majority muscles. It leaves Zegray and other retirees hoping to get the respect they deserve.
“We don’t have the power that people who are working have.”
“We can’t call a strike, so really it’s a matter of moral obligation of trying to get the government to listen to us,” Zegray said.
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