More than 80,000 bus drivers They are calling for a general strike in road passenger transport that begins this Monday to demand the application of a specific early retirement due to risk conditions at work in the sector.
CCOO and UGT They maintain the call, from 00:00 hours this Monday, October 28, a strike will affect the intercity, urban buses, discretionary and school transportation; as well as self-propelled cranes. Initially, the strike affected 300,000 workers, including truck drivers (about 220,000 employed), but These have finally been left out of the call when agreements were reached for both the transport of goods and health.
The strike call by CCOO and UGT, which has been supported by the majority of the rest of the unions, requires the application of reducing coefficients of the age for access to retirement in the sector for activities that involve a certain risk.
Their claims are a historical demand that the unions They began to put on the table already in 2004 and which has been the reason, since then, for different mobilizations, although this is the first time that a general strike has been called.
This Monday’s mobilization, during which a rally is planned in front of the Government Delegation in Madrid, It will be the first day of strike of the seven called. Thus, the protest will continue on November 11, 28 and 29; December 5 and 9; and, as of the 23rd of that month, it could become indefinite.
The deputy secretary general of the Federation of Services, Mobility and Consumer Affairs (FeSMC) of UGT, Pedro Aller, explained this week that, after the unions lowered their approach to the minimums that they considered essential, The freight transport employers’ associations have accepted it, but not the passenger associations. The agreement includes the commitment to implement preventive measures in companies and contemplates the possibility of adjusting costs to facilitate the necessary contributions in the merchandise sector and apply the reducing coefficients.
“They hide behind a cost issue”
The traveler employers who sit at the negotiation table –Confebus, Atuc, Anetra and Direbúsin addition to Anagrual-cranes, “they hide behind a cost issue”which the unions do not see “anywhere,” Aller explained.
The general secretary of the Road and Logistics sector of the Federation of Citizen Services of CCOO (FSC-CCOO), Francisco José Vegas, has told Efe that, until the time of the start of the strike, “There is always the option to cancel it.”but the conditions really do not exist.” Union sources consulted this Sunday explain that there has not been, at least for the moment, any news in this regard.
For the unions, the employers “has swerved” and they have left the table, despite the fact that “there were enough issues to be able to reach an agreement”, something to which they are still open as long as it is adhered to “the same terms that have been done with the merchandise negotiations.”
The employers ask for its cancellation
According to the Association of Urban and Metropolitan Public Transport (Atuc) and the Spanish Confederation of Bus Transport (Confebus), the mobilization has been convened without the prior dialogue table to any strike call, which is why they have requested CCOO and UGT to call it off. In addition, They have asked the unions to open a dialogue table to address, among other issues, all aspects related to early retirement, as reported in a statement.
Astuc and Confebus have recalled that they bring together road passenger transport companies that, as a whole, They have more than 95,000 workerswhich serve nearly 3.15 billion travelers each year. As for the minimum services, they have to be published the administrations that have ownership of the service which, in some cases, is Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility; and, in others, from the autonomous communities and the town councils themselves.
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