Returning to Relative Retirement Inevitable for Workers’ Equity

The Confederation of Algerian Syndicates considered that returning to retirement without the age condition as soon as possible corrected a mistake made by the governments of the previous era, as the decision had harmed a large group of workers and employees.

The CAS expressed, in a press conference held on Monday at the CNAPESTE headquarters in Algiers to open discussion again on five old files, its displeasure with the large increases in the prices of the most consumed materials.

The interventionists said that the recent decision to reconsider the income tax rates, which brought about wage increases for workers and employees, remains of limited impact, pending the government’s release of its decision regarding the inference point. On the other hand, the Confederation expressed its concern over the price increases of most widely consumed materials, which “caused a disturbance in purchasing power, and the government should remedy the matter as soon as possible.”

Concerning retirement without the age condition, interventionists representing 14 independent syndicates representing nine ministerial sectors confirmed that the decision to amend the retirement law and to dispense with relative retirement suddenly caused a shock to many of them, at a time when previous governments justified their decision to incapacitate the pension fund without presenting the financial report on running this fund for years, calling for the importance of returning to retirement without the age requirement as soon as possible to correct the mistake that, as they said, harmed a large group of workers.

Concerning the labour law file, the CAS warned against preparing any draft labour law in “dark rooms”, without the participation of workers’ representatives in drafting it, because it is one of the important projects in the lives of employees that guarantees their rights from employment to work practice, and then retirement.

The CAS believes, regarding Law 14/90, that exercising the syndical right in Algeria requires enacting a new law that is compatible with the changes that have occurred in the world of work because the current law mostly talks about the work environment in the economic sector, and it is not commensurate with the work environment in the public office, while it announced its support for the protest movement by employees in the south, to demand the renewal of the various grants, especially the grant for the region, which is still calculated based on the 1989 base wage.