The ongoing collective bargaining dispute is not just about the 2.4 million employees in the public sector at federal and local level. But also about the retirement benefits of a good half a million pensioners and around 190,000 other beneficiaries, i.e. the widows, widowers and orphans of the former civil servants.
There is a major imbalance at the federal level: around 200,000 civil servants and applicants face almost 600,000 pension recipients.
