Thousands of demonstrators crowded this noon in front of the Legislative Palace of Uruguay, in Montevideo, as part of the day of stop and go general convened by the single workers’ union, PIT-CNT, against the government’s plan to reform social security, an initiative which it considers negative for popular interests.

PIT-CNT president Marcelo Abdala called the mobilization “very good” in a brief dialogue with Télam from the doors of the Congress, where he was due to speak later in front of the crowd.

In summoning the protest, the union leader criticized the plan to increase the retirement age and therefore the number of years of work.

At the same time, he stated that “for massive contingents of the working class it generates fewer rights, removing conditions that have nothing to do with the country’s traditions. It should be remembered that social security arises from wage councils and collective bargaining. Social security is a mechanism to protect people, from which the market economy does not solve”, according to what was published by the local newspaper Faces and masks.

He also noted that social security implies the rights of children and others that arise when a worker dies, alluding to widow’s pensions.

He stated that this project “involves A setbackmaintains a perspective in which the majority sections of the population are losing rights”, adding that “the majority of the population does not agree with this pension reform”.

what the government says

On the other hand, the Minister of Labor and Social Security, Pablo Mieres, said this Thursday that the reform that the government intends to approve is not harmful to workers. “If not, I would not agree,” he said in statements to Canale 10.

He added that “the lengthening of the retirement age is inevitable” and questioned the PIT-CNT and the Front Ample for criticizing the project without presenting an alternative. “There has never been an alternative document. Opposing something is a sandwich,” she said.

The minister said that “reform is necessary”, so he expressed his disagreement with the strike against the project which already has half a sanction from the Senate. “I don’t agree that today there is a protest against a law that I think is necessary,” he said.

At the same time, he defended that 80 delegations “of all kinds” were received for the project assembly.

due to the mobilization traffic has been stopped in some points of the ring road of the Parliament, which causes detours and alterations that complicate mobility in the area, with important traffic jams, for example, on via Colombia, one of the exit routes from the Palace towards the avenue of the port, explained the Portale Sottolineato .

In the early hours of the morning the traffic inspectors were not present in the area to organize and divert the vehicles which, once they reached the Parliament area, ended up in a sort of funnel and were unable to continue along the ring road towards the Centre.

Source: Telam