Pensioners call for a combined joint union: 'We have lost our acquired rights'

* Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA)

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In a written statement, the Independent Pensioners Platform of Turkey, All Pensioners Union and Pensioners Solidarity Union have announced that they have decided to gather under the roof of a single union structure. The unions and platforms have briefly said:

"We, as the workers of yesterday and pensioners of today, worked in various fields and sectors under the conditions set by the state across the country and retired. While working, we fulfilled the retirement conditions, the legal status of which was specified by the state.

"In exchange for the premiums we paid, we have acquired a pension on which we can make a living for a month and the right to accessible-safe-free healthcare as much as we need.

"We have lost our acquired rights as a result of the privatizations and the change-transformation and restructuring of the country's economic-social structure over the last 22 years and in former periods."

The pensioners' unions and platforms have underlined that "for the healthcare services they need, they make payments for 14 items" and raised concerns that pensioners have become poorer as pensions have been increased based on the inflation rate for the past 11 years and they are not given a share from the national income or the country's growth rate.

Amid the recent economic crisis in Turkey, the unions and platforms have said that pensioners are now unable to meet their basic needs with their pensions due to the constantly decreasing purchasing power.

Call to all pensioners

Against this background, the three unions and platforms have made a call to all pensioner unions, platforms, including the ones getting organized on social media, associations and all pensioners:

"In the face of our impoverishment caused by the economic and social policies destroying our rights yesterday and today and kicking us out of the economic, social and cultural life, we have to wage our struggle and organization in a more powerful manner.

"In order to make the politicians who ignore us, who do not solve our problems and who postpone our problems hear us, in order to remind them of their responsibilities and duties and to discuss our demands at a collective agreement table, we call on you to wage a joint struggle by exercising together our union rights in the national and international laws and about which there are practices and court rulings in the domestic law".

Noting that their struggle in "a struggle for a humane life", unions and platforms have said, "We have to pave the way for a pension regime that suits society's needs, encompasses society as a whole and will be a guarantee in the old age, which is a precondition for being a social state".

Calling for a "new strong union structure" within this context, the signatories of the statement have underlined that in this way, they may make life easier for pensioners in Turkey by standing up against all practices making life harder for them and ignoring them. (AÖ/SD)