First day of strike in the passenger transport sector, urban and intercity bus drivers and tow truck drivers, of the various strikes planned between now and the end of the year to demand that professionals in the sector be able to bring forward their retirement due to the dangerousness of their work.
This Monday’s strikes are so far marked by compliance with minimum services, the absence of incidents and, also, by delays and queues of users at stations and interchanges throughout Spain.
“It took me about 15 minutes longer to get to Madrid, it’s long but it’s acceptable because I already knew it could happen today,” explains Elvira, who has just arrived from Alcalá de Henares at the Avenida de América interchange, in elDiario. .es. “What I don’t know is why they called a strike,” he adds. “They will have their reasons.”
In this Madrid interchange, the three bus sectors currently experiencing strikes come together: urban, interurban and long distance. While in the former the queues are a little longer than usual, in the long journeys they are non-existent, waiting for the next buses which, on Monday mid-morning, will leave for Bilbao and Aranda de Duero .
María del Mar, an EMT employee from Madrid, explains that she has been driving buses for 20 years. “We are taking responsibility for the difficulties encountered by bus drivers. We work long hours and pick up travelers. We are asking to be able to retire earlier because, at 65, driving a bus is hard. The cars overtake you and your reflexes diminish, you no longer have the same capacity,” he explains during the mobilization in front of the Government Delegation in Madrid. In total, several hundred professionals in the sector chanting and honking their horns at each passing urban bus. One of the protesters, who works for an intercity bus company in southern Madrid, gave examples of the health problems they suffer from. “We have a lot of back problems, vision problems and even varicose veins. “We spend many hours sitting.”
During the demonstration, Juan Carlos Gutiérrez, of the UGT highway strike committee, assures that this is a historic demand, that of giving legal security to workers. “The coefficients must be decided by the Government. “We understand that a worker over the age of 60 should not get behind the wheel as this could harm travelers.”
On this strike day, minimum services are respected, which the unions describe as abusive. “They are disproportionate, but they must be respected,” assumes Francisco José Vegas, secretary general of the FSC-CCOO Road and Logistics sector.
Concerning the agreement with the employers, the CCOO representative emphasizes that they are the ones who left the table. “Our goal is not to start a strike. What we want is for a file to be initiated so that early retirement can be put in place. Until now, employers put the economic cost ahead of occupational health and road safety.”
Strike days
Last week, the sector’s unions and employers met to try to reach an agreement and suspend the strike, scheduled for November 11, 28 and 29, in addition to this Monday. Also for December 5 and 9 and for an indefinite period from December 23, unless prior agreement. Unions and major employers in the sector have assured that negotiations will continue. In this section we tell you all the keys to this mobilization.
Last Thursday, an agreement had already been reached between road freight transport companies and worker representatives, who demanded the same measures as bus and tow truck drivers. They ask in particular to open the door to early retirement for drivers, which implies the application of decreasing coefficients due to “the difficulty and danger of the profession”. Workers consider this danger to be a problem for themselves and for third parties. In addition, they “already pay six times more than other workers for their contribution to workplace accidents and occupational illnesses.”
The general secretary of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, denounced this Monday, regarding the bus drivers’ strike called for this Monday by his union and CCOO, that “there is no EU country in which drivers must drag out their professional life until the age of 15.” 67, as is the case in Spain.
“Employers need to be aware that the sector needs improvements in the collective agreement. “You can’t cry every day because you can’t find people to work with and when negotiating the deal you don’t even make a proposal that allows us to move forward,” he said. he criticized.
Álvarez disfigured the “cynicism” of the employers: “It’s over. The transport sector in our country must find initial accommodation in the succession contract from the age of 63 and this must be included in collective agreements,” he defended.
We must remember that a few months ago, CCOO and UGT have already reached an agreement with the Ministry of Social Security, in the latest pension reformwhich is already considering a new procedure for accessing early retirement due to difficulties, which must be developed in a regulation, in addition to the modification of partial retirement and the relief contract.
The Federation of Citizen Services of CCOO emphasizes that it is the employers’ associations Confebus and ATUC, which total 95,000 workers, which “could sign jointly with the unions the request to open the procedure for applying the reduction and partial retirement coefficients voluntary for their employees. “workers” and that “although these measures are the result of tripartite social dialogue agreements, these employers are blocking their implementation”.
The Spanish Confederation of Bus Transport (Confebús) says that the day is going “almost completely normally”, with a level of compliance with minimum services at 95% and with some incidents caused by the pickets. “For the moment, there are around thirty broken windows, which prevents these vehicles from carrying out the corresponding services,” say employers in the sector.
In the Community of Madrid, minimum services reach 75% in urban areas and 80% in interurban areas during peak hours, falling to 50% and 45% respectively at other times. In Catalonia, they are 40% during peak hours and 20% during off-peak hours. As for long-distance national buses, they are at 50% throughout the day.
