Around 8 a.m. on weekdays there is normally a coming and going of travelers on the marble stairs in the monumental departure hall of Antwerp Central Station. On Monday morning, only sporadically someone takes the stairs. Most tracks also remain empty, only occasionally a train departs. Two groups of about ten people gather in the hall. One club wears green jackets (the color of the Christian union ACV), the other is dressed in red (the socialist union ABVV). They go to Brussels.
More than thirty thousand civil servants protested in the Belgian capital on Monday against possible plans to reform civil servants’ pensions. They would have to work longer and receive a lower pension due to a different calculation method. The demonstrators say The Newspaper carrying banners with slogans such as “It is no longer possible, now also our pension” and “Soon I will be a POOR citizen”. Several police officers were injured when striking firefighters sought confrontation.
The strike is also noticeable elsewhere in Belgium. In Flanders alone, a quarter of schools remained closed – more than 34,000 Flemish teachers stopped working. There were hardly any trains running all day, and only one metro line was open in Brussels. Only half of the flights departed from the capital’s airport, and all departures at Charleroi airport were canceled in the afternoon and evening. Prison staff also went on strike – in several places police officers took over the work of guards.
Priceless
In Belgium too, penises are in danger of becoming unaffordable. Due to a budget deficit of 26 billion euros, the next Belgian government will have to make significant savings. The parties currently negotiating a coalition have already leaked that they want to intervene in the pensions of civil servants. “It is simply not possible that someone who is now twenty years old will have the same pension rights as civil servants in recent years,” said formateur Bart De Wever to the VRT.
The pension conditions of civil servants are currently “more generous” than those of self-employed people or company employees, says economist Ive Marx of the University of Antwerp. Sometimes that is unjustified, he says. “For example, magistrates or professors who take early retirement still receive their full pension.”
The situation is different for civil servants in lower-paid professions. “Belgium has a system of cottages“, says Marx, referring to the maze of sheds that many Belgians have built in their backyards. “In the business world, for example, there are tax benefits such as company cars or meal vouchers, passes that the employer provides for shopping. Civil servants don’t get that, so they think a higher pension is justified.”
‘Belgian compromise’
It is unclear what exactly the plans on the formation table entail. “A number of measures that are known to cause protests are now being put on the market,” says Marx. Belgians take to the streets faster than the Dutch and, according to Marx, more than half are members of a trade union.
“Ultimately this results in a typical Belgian compromise of small measures with a long-term effect,” says Marx. This should satisfy both right-wing voters and the supporters of Vooruit, the only left-wing party in the formation.
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