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Make cheques out to Socialist Outlook and send to PO box 1109 London N4 2UU. High-quality T-shirts £5: £1 p+p Two-colour screen printed greeting cards £3 for six: 50p p+p Last week's one-day general strike suggests the post-war 'social pact' between Belgian employers and trades unions is over. CHRIS BROOKS reports from Brussels after a 60,000-strong trade union demonstration was called in four days. FACED with a massive public debt, the coalition Christian Democrat/Socialist Party government in Belgium has threatened to scrap a system of guaranteed pay-rises as part of a series of attacks on young people and workers.
Belgium has a strong postwar tradition of 'united' government-employer-trades union agreements. The 'social pacts' produced by these negotiations have always produced small gains for the working class.
Hard class struggle could have gained more, but with the highest productivity in Europe Belgium has massive social security and welfare rights.
Central to all this is the Index, a system where most workers get guaranteed pay rises in line with the rise of the cost of living.
The Index is the product of an agreement between the employers federation, the FEB, and the two trade union federations. It's one of reasons why trade union membership in Belgium is high.
This longstanding arrangement is threatened by the massive state debt. Last year the government paid £14 billion in interest payments- nearly four times more than it pays towards social security!
Under the pressure of the recession, the government wants to cut both wages and employers' National Insurance contributions. They aim to end the Index and introduce a layer of new, low paid, jobs for youth.
The response of the working class has been massive.
The FGTB union federation, unprepared to compromise on the Index, has walked out of discussions with the employers and government.
With just four days notice more than 60,000 members of the Socialist Party-aligned union joined a noisy and confident Brussels demonstration to mark a 24 hour strike.
Linked to the attacks on organised labour, the government plans to introduce new "little jobs' for the jobless, especially the youth - like 'companions', nannies, gardeners and supermarket bag-packers - on tiny wages and with poor social welfare rights. It's an arrangement that will deepen social inequality and insecurity.
Working people on the Brussels demonstration were eager to read and buy the literature of the Workers' Socialist Party, the Belgian section of the Fourth International.
The bosses government, argues the Party, must be replaced with a social government based on the workers', and other, mass organisations. The solution to the crisis WORLD NEWS is to cut the working week, with no loss of pay, and to ruthlessly attack both the financial fraud of big business and the current level of military spending.
These practical solutions have been eagerly heard. The Party sold out of a double-issue of its French-language journal La Gauche, dedicated to fighting the social pact.
At the same time, a radicalisation of youth is being marked by a 24 November strike of school and college students against racism and fascism. Especially strong in Flanders, where the far right Flemish Bloc got 11% of the vote in 1991, the strike is being enthusiastically built by the Socialist Young Guard, which also supports the Fourth International.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 52, November 13 1993, Page 6