By IRNA,
London : Trade unionists from the UK joined a ‘No to Austerity’ march and rally organized by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) in Brussels Wednesday.
Coinciding with the protest against huge cuts in public spending taking place across the continent, workers in towns and cities across the UK were holding public awareness events about the impact on local communities.
The general Secretary of Britain’s Trade Union Congress (TUC) Brendan Barber said that all across Europe governments have become “obsessed with immediate deficit reduction and are embarking on cuts programmes of such magnitude that the fragile recovery of the continent’s economies is threatened.”
‘Unions aren’t asking governments to ignore the deficit, just to discard the timetable that demands deficit reduction now and instead to concentrate on boosting growth and jobs,” Barber said.
“We also need a fairer system of taxation so that Europe’s economies can get back onto a firmer footing and avoid the risk of another recession,” he warned.
Earlier this month the TUC published research that showed the UK’s poorest 10 per cent will be hit 13 times harder by the government spending cuts than the richest ten per cent.
The ETUC march in Brussels, led by the leaders of 50 trade union organizations representing workers from 30 European countries, came after the TUC launched an All Together for Public Services campaign at their annual conference in Manchester earlier this month.
The solidarity rally also coincided with a general strike by Spanish unions protesting at cuts introduced by their government, and anti-cuts demonstrations in Portugal, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Serbia, Romania, Poland, Ireland and France.
In Britain, the TUC is holding a mass lobby of parliament in London on October 19, the day before Prime Minister David Cameron’s government announced the extent of cuts in its Comprehensive Spending Review.