Uruguayan unions will assess how to repeal the pension reform | News

The Uruguayan union movement confirmed this Friday that it will define next week if it advances in a constitutional plebiscite against the pension reform approved by the Government of Luis Lacalle Pou.

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They denounce that with the aforementioned pension reform, the minimum retirement age was increased from 60 to 65 years, which constitutes a setback in terms of labor rights for Uruguayans. The denunciation took heat from the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the General Strike of 1973.

The leadership of the Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores - Convención Nacional de Trabajadores (PIT-CNT) unions confirmed that, according to union lawyers, in particular, the constitutionalist José Korzeniak, the collection of signatures of 10 percent of the register should begin electoral process before April to carry out the popular consultation simultaneously with the general elections of October 2024.

However, despite the fact that in the PIT-CNT the rejection of the reform is unanimous, it transpired that there are differences on the strategy to be followed and also on the content of the eventual plebiscite.

Since last year, the Representative Table of the PIT-CNT by a large majority rejected consulting specialists on the direct democracy mechanisms available to face the reform, however this was reversed in April, on the eve of the final approval of the project in Parliament .

In turn, the leftist Frente Amplio, of which these unions are its union arm, has already announced that if it governs again it will convene different social organizations to face a new reform of the pension system.

The union leaders also advanced positions on the elimination of the so-called pension savings fund administrators (AFAP).

From the National Union of Workers in Private Education, Sergio Sommaruga, considered that the three options currently under consideration by the PIT-CNT are: "you don't have to go to any plebiscite because you are going to lose"; “yes, you have to go to a plebiscite, but to annul the law (of the reform) via constitutional amendment”, and the third is “that the plebiscite be used to place the central issues”.