PEMEN – STEFENSON – PES/NAT: “Starvation pensions force pensioners back into workplaces – death arenas”
PEMEN, STEFENSON, and PES/NAT unions call active and retired seafarers to engage in even more determined struggles to condemn and overturn anti-worker policies that “force us to work in ‘death arena’ workplaces until deep into old age.” Their statement was prompted by the tragic death of a retired NAT seafarer who had been working as a construction worker to supplement his meager pension and fell from a building while on the job.
The unions express their deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the deceased, emphasizing:
“The majority of pensioners in the country are trying to survive on starvation pensions, due to anti-insurance policies of successive governments, chronic underfunding, and the systematic plundering of social insurance funds by the state and employers. The austerity policies affecting seafarers’ pensions—imposed by capital and its political representatives—have left retirees unable to meet their own and their families’ basic needs. This employer-driven crime is just one side of the same coin: the anti-people policies of this and all previous governments.”
On one hand, they note that workspaces have become “death arenas,” with minimal safety measures, where the protection of human life is treated as an unnecessary expense by employers. Workers are forced to “walk a tightrope” just to make it through the workday alive and unharmed.
On the other hand, dismantling insurance and labor policies raise the retirement age, lower wages and pensions, and force pensioners to desperately seek work to survive.
The unions stress that organized struggle—through active coordination between active and retired workers—is the only way forward, fighting for wages and pensions that meet real living needs.
They call on all seafarers to escalate their efforts and resist the inhumane policies that keep pushing them into unsafe workplaces into old age.
They demand:
- Increases in all pensions to match inflation; minimum pension at 80% of the minimum wage.
- Reinstatement of the 13th and 14th pensions.
- Immediate payment of all retroactive pension amounts without legal or procedural barriers.
- Inclusion of the “personal difference” into actual pension payments for all pensioners.
- All survivor pensions (old and new) to follow the 2019 legal provision — never below the National Pension level.
- A fully public and free healthcare and medical system.
- Immediate hiring of doctors and nurses in public hospitals and health centers.
- Creation of public elder care homes across the country.
- Abolition of all taxes on electricity, gas, and essential goods.
- Major price reductions and caps on essentials, energy, and fuel. Debt relief: no pensioner without electricity, water, phone, or food.
- Abolition of all home foreclosures on working-class and low-income households.
