The European Trade Union Confederation warned today, International Workers’ Day, that “another cost of living crisis is not inevitable” and demanded that European Union leaders protect jobs and wages against inflation.
“Workers have every reason to be on the streets today. Jobs are disappearing, prices are rising and wages are falling behind,” said the secretary general of Esther Lynch, in a statement.
European unions claim that “workers refuse to pay the price for Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East”, a conflict they blame for rising prices that “put jobs at risk and end the modest recovery in wages”.
The union leader added that the demonstrations planned for today “show that workers will not stand idly by while their jobs and standard of living are destroyed.”
It also demanded that European institutions provide “wages that keep pace with the cost of living, measures on energy prices to ensure that profits do not overtake people, and real investment in jobs and industries.”
“We need to boost the economy by putting money in workers’ pockets, charge extraordinary taxes on the exorbitant profits of big energy companies and invest in renewable energy to avoid a similar crisis in the future,” Lynch added.
