Slovenian trade unions are against the structural reforms pursued by the government of Prime Minister Borut Pahor and consider them socially unjust, proposing the introduction of taxes on wealth, primarily on financial profit.
"The public debt has been incurred because of the institutions that caused the crisis, and the government has launched structural reforms to save on pensions, health care and many other things. We say that a reform should be carried out in the financial sector in which the state invested billions of euros to save it at the time of the crisis. Why wouldn't that sector now pay that money back?" union leader Dusan Semolic told the Ljubljana-based daily Delo of Thursday.
Semolic is the leader of Slovenia's strongest union federation and together with six other union leaders he has launched an initiative to hold a referendum on abolishing the pension reform which envisages increasing the current number of years of service required for normal old age retirement by three years.
"If we stop the pension reform, there is hope that we will also stop other reforms that are unjust and hostile towards workers," said Semolic, calling for taxing financial transactions and dividends.
He said that all Slovenian union federations were unanimous in their position and that they would not give in to the government's attempts to "soften them up".
