The Logroñesa Platform for the Defense of Public Pensions and the Housing Union have announced that they will attend jointly the mobilizations of next Wednesday, a day of general strike, to demand “together” housing, wages, pensions and public services, considering that these are issues “that go beyond age. They affect us all”.
In relation to the public pension system and “for those parties that say they are not sustainable”, the Platform insists that “they are” and calls for “to raise the wages of workers” as a way to ensure its viability.
So he has explained the spokesperson for the Platform in Defense of Pensions, Pedro Gómez, after criticizing “the words of Vox and the PP” against the current model. As he has emphasized, “it is necessary to consider that pensions are paid with the contributions of employers and workers; therefore, if there are 22 and a half million people who are contributing, what they have to do is raise wages”.
Defense of the pay-as-you-go system against the mixed model
Gómez is in favor of maintaining the pay-as-you-go system because “it is equitable and intergenerational” and it has been applied “for years”, while showing his rejection of the mixed system. Regarding the latter, he warns that “it is important to understand that behind that friendly expression of ‘mixed model’ there is a radical change that jeopardizes the well-being of people who retire without having large assets, in a capitalization system”.
With this scheme, each worker is building up savings in an individual account and a bank entity or a private manager places those funds in financial markets, charging management and maintenance commissions. “They, as private entities, assume no risk but they charge anyway and if they go bankrupt, with luck for the participants in that fund it is possible that the state will come to the rescue,” he said.
Consequently, “the pension you receive when you retire is not assured, but rather it will be what there is in the account on the day of retirement, whether it is a lot or a little, depending on the evolution of inflation and financial markets”.
“This is not about older people against young people”
From the Housing Union, its spokesperson, Mariola Gutiérrez, supports the joint mobilization because it is a matter of problems “that affect all of us”. “The problem of housing and precarious employment is not generational, it is not a matter of older people against young people, but rather it is a problem of social class,” she said.
In her opinion, the strike "is for all ages; the older people fighting are an example of the younger generations. Together we learn and support one another to build a world in which it is worth living, regardless of our age".
"We keep paying our taxes"
On behalf of the Logroñesa Platform in Defense of Pensions, Pablo Benito recalls that older people "we keep paying the taxes that are owed to us, we help the younger ones... it is not true that they are not profitable".
He calls for not confusing public opinion with comparisons that "offer completely incomparable figures". In this sense, he denounces that certain parties put the interprofessional minimum wage and the maximum pension side by side, something that "cannot be".
As a reference, he points out that the average pension of the system (retirement, permanent disability, widowhood, orphanhood, or in favor of relatives) is around 1,363.81 euros, while the average salary stands at 2,240 euros. If only the average retirement pension is considered, it rises to about 1,524.51 euros compared with a median/common salary of 1,945 euros, according to the INE. He emphasizes that there is no average pension higher than the average salary. "Pensioners do not receive more than workers".
Wages "do not rise" and the wage gap surges
Benito also laments that in Spain wages grow "far less" than across the OCDE as a whole, an organization that groups together 38 countries. When reviewing the trend between 1995 and 2026, he argues that real wages, once the cost of living has been deducted, "have suffered structural stagnation" and have barely advanced by 5 percent in three decades, "while the shopping basket has increased by 63 percent and leisure, for example, costs 52 percent more".
"This is a structural problem of low wages, low wage increases, and zero purchasing power". In his view, the source of the imbalance "is not pensioners, but the business community or the large multinationals".
As an example of inequality, he explains that a top executive can end up earning around 300 times the SMI, reaching in some cases figures close to 550 times the minimum wage. If the comparison is made with the overall average salary of the workforce at these large companies, the wage gap of senior management stands at 67 times the average salary of its workers.