The three Belgian union confederations have called a general strike on Monday to protest against the Belgian Government’s austerity package. Austerity is not inevitable. There are alternatives. But the Government’s approach left unions without an alternative and made the General Strike itself inevitable.

The Belgian unions believe that instead of austerity, we need a plan for jobs to create quality and sustainable employment; rolling back anti-social pension and welfare benefit reform; ensuring wages keep up with inflation, thus protecting purchasing power; investing in public services since we all need teachers, firefighters, nurses etc; taxing wealth and capital gains instead of labour.

Our action is designed to convince the Belgian Government and employers to take into account the reality of workers’ lives:

• Jan graduated but he will have to wait 3 months to receive JSA and most likely he will be trapped in a series of precarious short-terms contracts, like most of his contemporaries;
• Alice is a nursery teacher and she is exhausted and wishes to retire early, but she will have to contribute for 5 more years before she can retire at 62;
• Luc is 55 years old and was fired. He has sent 100 CV but no employer wants to hire him. However he will have to remain available on the labour market until is 60 years old;
• Ahmed is 53 and has 32 years of contributions. He works in a hospital and suffers from bad back but he can’t reduce his working hours and go into semi-retirement until is 55.

On Monday, as European leaders gather to discuss the new treaty on fiscal discipline, the Belgian unions will tell European institutions that we are for a Social Europe and against austerity.

On 2 December all three Belgian national trade union centres - the FGTB, the CSC and the CGSLB – organised a national demonstration. Why? Because the draft budget bill for 2012 has just been finalised by the negotiators of the future government (Belgium hasn’t had one for over a year now) and it contains austerity measures we cannot support.

These austerity measures concern early retirement, unemployment benefits, healthcare and public services as well as working conditions for the young. Benefits for the long-term unemployed will be cut, people will have to contribute for longer before they can retire, young people will have to work longer before their employment is protected and so on.

Neither workers nor benefit recepients have been consulted. The bill for the crisis should not be presented for payment to the weakest in society, and less so to future generations. Obviously we are aware that consolidating public finances is necessary. But not at the expense of workers and benefit claimants.

Austerity is not inevitable. The FGTB has an alternative and it was to make our voice heard that workers and benefit claimants were in Brussels on 2 December. Trade unions propose alternative sources of revenue to balance the budget from those earning the highest incomes and making capital gain. We need a deep overhaul of fiscal policy including among other things combating tax evasion, a reform of tax on revenue from capital and an abolition of corporate tax cuts.

Austerity is not the solution, it will only make things worse. On the contrary, we have to invest to spur sustainable growth and we must find the resources from those responsible for the crisis: bankers and financiers. Moreover, a plan to stimulate growth is urgently needed to create quality and sustainable jobs.