Professionals in the passenger transport sector will stop this Monday to ask that they be included among the risk professions that have the right to early retirement. Unlike their merchandise counterparts, the meeting held last Thursday at the SIMA headquarters with the employers’ associations of the sector hit home and today they will begin the first of the six days of strike called until Christmas, which could put mobility in check. on key dates for passenger transportation.
The CC.OO unions. and UGT call on around 95,000 professionals in the sector to mobilize. The strike affects the urban, interurban, school bus and tow truck services and threatens to collapse traffic in the main Spanish cities. “They threaten to carry out very harsh strikes,” say sources close to the negotiating table. For now, the drivers will gather in Madrid at 12:30 in front of the government delegation in the capital. During the day, minimum services of 50% are decreed.
In capitals such as Barcelona, Seville, Malaga, as well as in the rest of the important cities in Spain, major demonstrations are also expected and the workers of municipal companies have decreed minimum services similar to those in Madrid. There is concern among companies in the sector because there is still no date for the next meeting. The main employers’ associations in the sector assure that all the bridges are built. The Association of Urban and Metropolitan Public Transport (ATUC) and the Spanish Confederation of Bus Transport (Confebus) released a joint statement last Friday in which they claimed to be open to new conversations to try to unblock the situation. They said they were not determined to agree to the union’s request for early retirement, but they asked first to prepare a joint study to find out “the implications that a measure of this magnitude may entail.”
The associations hope to reach an agreement before the next day of mobilizations, which is scheduled for next November 11. Likewise, there are also strikes called for November 28 and 29; on December 5 and 9, coinciding with the Constitution long weekend, and on December 23, in full operation for the Christmas festivities.
Threat of indefinite unemployment
If an understanding is not reached until then, the unions threaten to carry out indefinite strikes. The bus drivers’ union will thus try to pressure employers to jointly present to Social Security the beginning of the procedure established to implement the system of reduction coefficients at the retirement age. This is an advantage that other transport professionals such as airplane pilots and railway machinists already enjoy and that truck drivers now aspire to have, following the agreement reached between employers and unions last Thursday. If this goes ahead, the retirement age of this group could be reduced from 67 to 60 years.
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