Pension reform: Luxembourg trade unions boycott 'expert' consultation

"This was the neutral title of the first meeting of the consultation on the reform of the Luxembourg pension system. But behind the facade of the discussions, in the trade unions' opinion, there is a politically staged play in which the roles have already been assigned and the finale is prescribed in advance.

Although Health and Social Protection Minister Martine Deprez has previously said she has no intention of touching the retirement age, it is now the issue that has been brought to the forefront. An accident? Or a well-planned twist, according to the country's three largest unions - OGBL, LCGB and CGFP.

Trade unions are sounding the alarm: instead of an honest social dialogue, a platform where pre-selected experts are put on the same level as the organisations that have historically run the pension system together with the state. The traditional Luxembourg model of social partnership is thus being eroded.

This is particularly critical given that the country's pension system was built precisely on the principles of bilateral management - through representatives of employees and employers elected to the Chambers of Employees and Civil Servants.

The unions accuse the government of deliberately excluding key representatives of the social partners and attempting to marginalise their influence.

Tellingly, the ministry ignored the joint trade union analysis report of October 2024, which proves that raising the retirement age does not guarantee the sustainability of the system. This conclusion was also confirmed by the IGSS technical report (2022).

It is also questionable that the choice of topics for the expert meetings is allegedly based on the results of the public platform "Schwätz mat", where, as the unions recall, almost half of the respondents supported union positions - yet none of these topics were included in the agenda.

The claim in the government memo that working until a later age is supposedly good for health has caused particular resonance. Trade unions call it manipulation and an attempt to impose an ideological narrative on the public, which has been disproved by a plethora of international studies indicating that physical and mental stress increases with extended working life.

In essence, as the OGBL, LCGB and CGFP argue, the government is seeking to reduce the role of trade unions to statists in order to push through unpopular reforms under the guise of expert consensus. This not only weakens workers' social rights, but also destroys the very basis of the Luxembourg model of consent, which for decades has balanced interests in labour and social relations.