The ‘big’ discourse of politicians, especially about people with foreign roots, is very alarming and dangerous. That is what ACV chairman Marc Leemans said yesterday on the occasion of Rerum Novarum, the celebration of the Christian labor movement.
Leemans gave a speech in Roeselare on Wednesday evening. In his speech he lashes out at the image that politicians create of social security as a hammock. He mentioned MR chairman Georges-Louis Bouchez and Conner Rousseau by name. “But Rousseau also likes to do a ‘Boucheztje’, with his basic job or with the sick who ‘have to’ be cured or with the use of child money for compulsory childcare”, says Leemans about the Vooruit chairman.
In this way, says the ACV top man, people are stigmatized, boundaries are pushed and the debate hardens and cools. Particularly alarming is the focus in that “big discourse” on people with foreign roots, with housewives with foreign roots at the forefront. “This is particularly dangerous because it only fuels the far right and reinforces intolerance in our society. Who is then surprised about the results of polls?”, says Leemans. By hefty is meant a right-wing course by left-wing parties, including on asylum and migration or a stricter approach to the unemployed.
Union haters
Delhaize also received a blow from Leemans. The supermarket chain treats the staff as tools that are “thrown into another and cheaper work case from one day to the next”.
There is criticism of the business world in general. Many of those companies, says Leemans, have used the war in Ukraine and the covid aftermath to make profit margins even higher. In his speech, the ACV chairman accuses those companies of “grabbing inflation”.
Leemans also returned to the commotion surrounding his person at the end of February. He would be abusing SWT, the former bridging pension, when he left, was the criticism. Leemans will stop as chairman, he later clarified, but will continue to work for the union until 2025. The criticism was “a personal reckoning,” says the president of the Christian union, “of union haters.”
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