Brussels, 04/03/2009
Reiner Hoffmann, Deputy General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) says: ‘It is frightening to see how the president of the European Central Bank has forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Not wages but interest rates should be cut’.
Carola Fischbach-Pyttel, General Secretary of the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) states: ‘Labour is not a commodity. We welcome the recent Ver.di agreement in the German public sector (a 5% wage increase over two years) as striking a balance between the need to support household demand in times of crisis and the objective to maintain the sustainability of public finances’.
David Begg, Secretary General of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) highlights: ‘Calling for deflation is not the way to go. The name of the game is debt deflation. Wage cuts will worsen the already excessive debt load of households and this will end up in killing the domestic side of the Irish economy’.
Frank Bsirske, President from the German United Services Union Ver.di (Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft) outlines: ‘In the past, German economic policy has done exactly what the ECB is now recommending. Generalised stagnation of average real wages together with real wage cuts for workers at the bottom of the labour market have proven to be disastrous. The German economy has remained in the doldrums for many years while poverty, in particular child poverty, has seen a spectacular increase’.
Further information
Speech by Jean-Claude Trichet on The external and internal dimension of Europe's competitiveness.
Press contacts
This is a joint press statement of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), German United Services Union Ver.di (Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft) and Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU).
ETUC: Patricia Grillo, phone +32 (0) 2 224 04 30
EPSU: Brian Synnott, phone + 32 (0) 2 250 10 80
ICTU: Mcdara Doyle, phone + 353 1 8897799
Ver.di: Günter Isemeyer, phone +49 (0) 30 6956 1011