Pensions talks leave unions and employers frustrated

The failure of the third meeting between government ministers, employers’ representatives and trade unions to reach a long-term agreement on securing Luxembourg’s pensions system has been met with frustration.

Although compromise was reached on some points, representatives from both the LCGB trade union and the UEL business lobby group were quick to vent their disappointment in interviews on Thursday morning.

LCGB president Patrick Dury told public broadcaster 100,7 that he thought all three meetings with the government and employers – two had been held before the summer break – had been pretty chaotic.

The union representative said he would have been happier “if we had managed to emerge with a negotiated agreement.”

“Even if we had not managed to get one hundred percent of our demands – which we never achieved in a Tripartite either, there are always compromises,” Dury added.

Dury explained that he believed Wednesday’s failure to reach a clear agreement was down to efforts by the UEL to frustrate a longer-term deal, after they didn’t get what they thought they had been promised.

Tripartite model at risk

Even if the government had been forced to negotiate because of the pressure applied by the mass demonstration against reforms called by the unions in the capital at the end of June, Dury said that the long-standing Luxembourg model of tripartite consultations between the government, unions and employers was now in danger.

“We will have to see if the bad climate, which I would describe as execrable, will have repercussions on the ground. We don’t want any repercussions; we would rather have had an agreement for the people. But if that’s the way it is, then we will have to take the necessary action,” he said.

In an earlier interview, also on 100,7, former justice minister and current Green deputy Sam Tanson said that social dialogue had “taken a beating”.

“First, the government really caused a major division by siding entirely with one side [the employers], which of course entered the talks with high hopes,” Tanson said. “And then having three long sessions of talks, with over 40 hours of negotiations, with no agreement yet.”

Tanson and CSV parliamentary faction leader Marc Spautz, who has sided with the unions on several aspects of the talks regarding longer opening hours and collective bargaining, agreed that the issue of pensions could dominate the next election campaign.

Greens regret lack of creativity

Tanson said she was surprised by Deputy Prime Minister Xavier Bettel’s statements after Wednesday’s talks, in which he seemed to criticise the stance of CSV Prime Minister Luc Frieden and Social Security Minister Martine Deprez in wanting to push through pensions reform without social dialogue.

Bettel had also called on political parties to show their colours. “If there is one party that has not shown its colours, then it is the DP,” Tanson said. “We are not shying away from the debate. We have made our position clear,” she added.

“But what has been missing from the talks is any creativity. We have turned the screws for now, so that the pensions system is secured for three or four years, but we regret there has been no detail on financing the pensions system, for instance,” said Tanson.

UEL fears issue being pushed into next election

However, UEL president Michel Reckinger said on RTL that he sees a danger in pushing the pensions reform discussion into the next election campaign.

“It would be all too easy to propose easy, populist solutions that do not really tackle the basis of the problem,” he said.

Reckinger said that sustaining the current Luxembourg pensions system requires annual economic growth of 3%.

He argued that the UEL was the only side in the discussions that has said that people currently on a pension should also contribute to increases to the pensions pot – the agreement reached yesterday would see the state, employers and employees each raising their contributions by 0.5 percentage points.

“We were the only ones who said we should take from the fat cats and give more to the small people,” Reckinger said.