107th ILC: Speech of Quim Boix, Secretary General of the WFTU TUI Pensioners, presented to the Plenary Session
07 Jun 2018
Receive a greeting from Pensioners and Retirees from all over the planet.

I speak to you on behalf of the only global organization that groups them.

We are united by the same just demands, analyzed from a class perspective, which is to say, as Karl Marx analyzed, from the reality of the confrontation of social classes that capitalism generates.

We know that the audience, in the annual Plenaries of the ILO, is, as long as we do not change it, made mainly of defenders of capitalism as a system. But this system goes from crisis to crisis (which are structural and systemic, that is, inescapable) until its final crisis.

We are supporters of socialism, which will be the future in all countries of the planet, even if pro-capitalists try to delay this change. The experience of the former socialist countries has made it possible to learn from the mistakes made and for that reason the second stage of extension of socialism will be the final one.

While we do not recover the advantages of socialism for the majority of human beings, we will continue to organize ourselves within capitalism.

Today I can announce that we are going to hold our Second World Congress of Pensioners and Retirees class organizations, at the beginning of next year, in a country in Latin America. In this area of ​​the planet there are large organizations, with millions of members, who defend Pensioners from class positions.

We have already organized the Pensioners in the 5 continents and we have already demonstrated our ability to fight in defense of our just demands with several actions coordinated worldwide.

We will continue supporting the Pensioners and Retirees in the struggles, country by country, so that in the end all the legislations will recognize that every person over 60 must receive a pension that ensures a dignified life, that is, with potable water in a habitable dwelling, with sufficient healthy food, and free public attention to the needs of health, culture and local transport.And this regardless of whether the pensioner quoted sufficiently during the period of active life as a worker. If you did not quote it was your fault, those who run capitalism, who did not give you the job you asked for. You, the pro-capitalists, prefer that there are millions of unemployed people in order to lower wages, based on the false “laws of the market”, which are only applied to those who do not own the means of production.On the other hand, to the owners of the means of production, you grant them all the advantages and subsidies (tax havens included). By “you” we mean the managers of capitalism, the owners of the multinationals (representatives of whom there are many in this room), those who extract the benefits of this exploitation, very well analyzed by the Marxists.But little by little the majority of the population will stop voting for political parties that promise one thing and do the opposite. The lie is the basis of the false bourgeois democracy, and although for decades it has been deceiving the voters, that will soon end.We know that there is enough wealth on the planet to ensure that pensions are paid by the budgets of the states. It would be enough by stopping allocating 2% or more of the Gross Domestic Product of the capitalist states to wage war (as it’s been ordered by NATO) and to allocate those resources to facilitate a dignified life for all the people in the world.We pensioners are on track to be 30% of the voters and from our class organizations we are going to ensure that no vote goes to political parties that defend capitalism.We are going to transmit to the new generations our important experiences of struggle against the exploitative businessmen. In these experiences there are the achievements of the working class, in the past decades and thanks to the WFTU, achievements that have represented great improvements: holidays, labor rights, safety at work, public health and education, as well as pensions.In addition, we have more than 100 years of experiences of good functioning of labor rights in the countries that tried to build socialism. Today, its inhabitants regret having lost the individual rights they enjoyed for decades and will surely enjoy again in the future, when we end the exploitation of man by man.Know that pensioners and retirees will fight, alongside the working class, for our just rights, until the last day of our lives.

LONG LIVE THE WORKING CLASS!LONG LIVE THE WORLD FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS!LONG LIVE SOCIALISM!LONG AND DIFFERENT LIFE FOR PENSIONERS AND RETIRED!