The government presented on Thursday a series of measures “aimed at reducing the inflationary pressure on companies and households”. The OGBL, one of the trade unions involved in the tripartite negotiations, refused to sign the final agreement.
On Saturday, the trade union wanted to “clarify” the reasons that led it to reject the proposal made by the government during the tripartite. In a statement sent to the press, the OGBL said that “unfortunately, these clarifications appear to be necessary in view of the dubious, not to say misleading, presentation made by the government and employers since then”.
In the press release, the OGBL stresses that “it is not true” that the trade union refused to sign the tripartite agreement on the grounds that it wanted employees earning up to €160,000 a year to be compensated for the postponement of the wage indexation normally scheduled for August 2022. The OGBL insists that this is a “huge joke” and laments the fact that these accusations “have been echoed in the press”.
According to the trade union, the real reason behind its refusal to sign the agreement was that it could not “give the government a blank cheque to manipulate the index until 2024". The OGBL says it cannot accept the postponement of several wage indexations and the fact that they would be financed “by the purchasing power of almost all employees, pensioners, and their families”.
For the trade union, this is “a vast operation of reverse redistribution, from the bottom to the top”. And the OGBL does not mince its words about the measures meant to compensate for the postponement of the next indexation to 2023 either.
According to the trade union, it will not be enough to compensate for the wage indexation planned for August 2022. “For 40% of the population (the “rich” according to the government), there will already be no compensation at all (0); and for about 20% of the population, the compensation will be trivial in relation to the loss of income caused by the postponement of the wage indexation”.
And that is not all, according to the OGBL press release. The trade union is concerned about the future of the possible wage indexations that could still be due in 2022 and 2023. The OGBL points out that the signatories of “the 2-1/2-partite agreement” agreed on a minimum period of 12 months between two wage indexations. For this reason, the trade union warns, there is a real risk that an entire wage indexation will be permanently lost, if inflation remains at the current level or increases even further.
The trade union goes so far as to question the name chosen by the government for this package of measures (‘Solidaritéitspak’ – “solidarity package”) and accuses the government of misleading advertising.
The party president of the Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (LSAP) reacted on Saturday to criticism aimed against the decisions of the tripartite.
In a Facebook post, Closener expresses her disappointment regarding the criticism and accusations in the context of the ‘Solidaritéitspak’.
It was the LSAP that fought from the very beginning for tax credits, Closener stressed.
She explained that the goal of the LSAP was to “help people with low and medium incomes”. According to the party president, the measures of the ‘Solidaritéitspak’ fulfil that goal.
Closener points out that people in tax class 1 with a gross salary below €5,700 will get more money from the tax credit than they would have received through a wage indexation in August. However, in her Facebook post, Closener also admits that the LSAP “would have wanted more” and that the agreement “is not perfect”. Nevertheless, the LSAP party president adds, it represents “a compromise between almost all of the social partners”.
Closener expresses her regret that one of the trade unions did not want to sign.
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