Key Bulgarian trade union endorses Wage Union

Podkrepa trade union, which is often referred to as “Bulgaria’s Solidarity”, has endorsed the European Citizens’ Initiative for a Wage Union. With its membership of around 150 thousand people, Podkrepa is among Bulgaria’s largest workers’ unions, the representatives of which met the representatives of European Wage Union Initiative.

Yet another trade union confederation has endorsed the Wage Union concept. The representatives of the Wage Union visited Sofia where they met Dimitar Manolov, the president of Podkrepa, a trade union with a history of three decades.

Expressing his satisfaction that the Wage Union Initiative was launched, Mr Manolov stated that his organization’s 150 thousand members were going to endorse it by submitting their statements of support. The trade union leader suggested that

the European Union’s current eco-political model was extremely harmful and would lead to cultural suicide by the still prosperous Western European states

while the hard-pressed Eastern European ones were on the road to a demographic disaster in spite of their insistence on their traditions. It is a significant sign that one out of three Bulgarian babies are now born abroad.

The representatives of the Wage Union and Podkrepa agreed that unless the EU’s current economic and social model is reformed immediately, the future of European nations becomes doubtful as the drain of the young and skilled yet cheap labour force from the peripheral states will have a highly harmful effect on the demographic and employment indicators of the poorer member states as well as have unforeseen consequences for the ethnic and employment situation of the core states.

The recent success achieved in Slovenia and Bulgaria clearly shows that the Wage Union initiative has triggered a new alliance to be formed in Europe in order to create a fairer Europe with more solidarity.

Source: press release – wageunion.eu