Brazil: Defeat the Pension Reforms of President Bolsonaro and Mayor Covas!

Build the political general strike to overthrow these governments!

Statement of the Corrente Comunista Revolucionária-CCR (Brazilian section of the RCIT), 8 February 2019, http://www.elmundosocialista.blogspot.com

The public employees of São Paulo voted in a meeting on February 7 for the continuation of the strike that began on the first day of the 2019 school year against the pension reform of the city mayor Bruno Covas (PSDB). The assembly had more than 50,000 workers present.

This reform, known as Sampaprev, plans an increase of 11% to 14% of the rate charged on the city public employees for social security contributions, which means a 3% reduction in workers' salaries.

For more than ten years, with the exception of educators, the rest of the municipal employees receives a ridiculous salary increase of only 0.01 percent, and now with this new law approved by the conservative majority Municipal Council Hall, they will have a confiscation increase of plus 3% (that is, 14%, in total) of the salary, which is equivalent to a loss of 11 days of work per year. When we add to this the Federal Income Tax, most likely some employees will have a discount of almost half of their wages, a really true confiscation.

The Municipal Union of Municipal Public Employees of São Paulo (Sindsep) and the City Union of Education Professionals (Simpeem) and 30 other unions will hold a new assembly and demonstration next Wednesday (13). This strike must be radicalized. All public employees must stop their activities, occupy their places of work, schools, etc., take to the streets and demand immediate revocation of the law, for salary increase and the end of wage’s confiscation, as well as the end of the rightists policies taken by the Mayor Covas and ultra-reactionary President Bolsonaro.

The mayor of Sao Paulo, like former putchist president Temer and the current ultra-reactionary president Bolsonaro, says it is necessary to carry out the pension reform to "balance public finances". However, just as president Bolsonaro is trying to do, the solution found by Covas is to punish public employees and general workers instead of facing the debate presented by leftist parties in order to charge companies that owe billions to social security and to eliminate the enormous subsidies to the great entrepreneurs and landowners.

The struggle of the public sector workers of São Paulo should unite with a national struggle against Bolsonaro's pension reform, which wants to put an end to public and collective pensions by introducing the individual capitalization regime, which has already proved a disaster in Chile.

* Down with the pension reform of Bolsonaro in federal scope and the one of Bruno Covas in São Paulo municipality!

* Call popular assemblies in unions, workplaces and neighborhoods!

* Form a United Front against pension reforms!

* Fight the Labor Reform and Eliminate Outsourcing!

* Build the political general strike to overthrow these governments!