(en) France, Organisation Communiste Libertarie (OCL) - Indefinite strike workers cleaning and public gardens in Madrid -- The point on the 10th day (fr)

The 10th day of the indefinite strike of 6500 sweepers, gardeners and other workers 
cleaning the streets and public gardens of Madrid, the international press began to make 
the echo. Yeah, "Madrid is dirty" , she became the "capital of filth" , rubbish are piled 
on the sidewalks, containers overflowing and were burned and shrubs begin to dry ... and 
all that terribly tarnished his image, threat to drop in tourism already down this year. 
Traders and hoteliers begin to scream. The Mayor of Madrid threat to break the strike. 
---- A strike against layoffs and wage cuts ---- The strike began on Nov. 5 and began the 
day in the evening with a demonstration of several thousand people from the Atocha station 
and Puerta del Sol, called by all the unions in the sector, CGT, Solidaridad Obrera, 
FSP-UGT, CCOO, USO, CSI-F and AST.

The strike on the four companies (all subsidiaries of construction companies) who share 
subcontracting since the signing of a new contract with the city last summer: they want to 
lay around 20% of the workforce and lower wages up to 43% of those who remain. In previous 
months, the non-renewal of contracts of outsourcing had already caused the downsizing of 
350 people and their immediate dismissal.

A question was also quickly asked: how do the same job with 20% of the workforce and less? 
Several answers were given: the lengthening of working time (35 to 40 hours per week), the 
removal of certain "benefits" as the payment of sick leave, the end of the garbage on 
weekends and days public, the reorganization of teams and the "redeployment" enrollments 
by a new division of the city, obviously favoring the "uptown" and the tourist center ...
This has already begun and residents' associations begin to monitor the frequency of the 
transition teams scans by district and prepare a record on the information on reducing the 
number of rounds.
But on this point, on how to manage the conflict and the implementation of the concession 
agreement, interest may diverge. Because the new contract includes penalty clauses if 
companies do not fulfill their obligations, which has the effect of lowering the monthly 
bill paid by the city. This has been the case in September and October, before the strike. 
To what extent, dealers companies are ready to go, both vis-?-vis the municipality as 
workers? And the construction companies are overly powerful, it is they who, for example, 
are the main beneficiaries of the privatization of health services in the Autonomous 
Community of Madrid owners of five hospitals built by them, they hire them according to 
the region PPP contracts that we have here.


Issues

The stakes in this conflict are double and include both workers in this sector and the 3.2 
million inhabitants of this great community.

The mayor of this city, Ana Botella (PP, right), after the conflict officially 
disinterested saying that it was not about the city but the subcontractors and their 
employees, is now at the center of the game, because of trash that washes the city but 
also because the main reason for the strike is in the cuts made (16.2% in 2013) in the 
municipal budget to the origin of renewals of contracts subcontracting month July. The 
public debt of the city exceed 7 billion.

From the beginning of the second week of the strike, the Mayor of Madrid was quick to 
declare that the strike was "wild" , threaten strikers sanctions and denounced "acts of 
vandalism and sabotage" committed by some strikers to prevent the minimum service. It is 
true that the strike is both active (stakes) and actively supported by people who are 
eager to put new bins in few places, the tourist areas of the center, as they are removed.


Threats to break the strike

Wednesday, November 13, the elected official has threatened to call a cleaning service 
company (Tragsa), if there was an agreement to end the strike "within 48 hours" , to 
replace the strikers and hire judicial proceedings for "non-compliance with minimum 
service", set at 40% of the total garbage from the public highway.

Except that things are not so simple.
Firstly, the public company mobilized to break the strike, and its subsidiary Tragsa 
Trasatec, part of the Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales (including 16 
autonomous communities, and among them that of Madrid, are shareholders) are themselves 
engaged in a process of collective redundancies of 1,369 workers in 9848 of the total. 
November 7, these workers have also made ??a clutch 24 hours.
Moreover, the company - which generally occurs at the request of the administration in 
cases of emergency and serious health risks (ie they who cleaned the tanker Prestige in 
Galicia) - does not count more than 940 employees all over Madrid, nothing to replace 
strikers 6000 ... The unions in this business that they have refused to be mobilized to 
break the strike, they declare their solidarity.

After one week of the strike, the subcontractors would have reduced their claims: they lay 
off more than 625 workers, would put others in technical unemployment temporarily decrease 
wages "only" 12%. Unions have indicated Monday, November 11 they refused these proposals.

A meeting of strikers

Solidarity

Solidarity with the strikers began in the first week, with several initiatives, including 
a demonstration in the working class district of Carabanchel Thursday, Nov. 7 and another 
in the evening of Monday, November 11 in the center of Madrid with a thousand participants 
the call of some unions (control), but not all.

Also increasing calls to support the strikers, for example by laying waste to the banks or 
the headquarters of the People's Party, or by setting up crates of resistance (including a 
combination of living in the neighborhood of the PAU Vallecas through the Red de 
Solidaridad Popular), organizing concerts in support areas. An online petition has 
collected that day (14/11) more than 81 000 signatures.

Other point and diffuse interventions emerge here and there, like a group of graffiti 
artists ("Ana Botella Crew"), themselves exposed to municipal law enforcement (a rain of 
fines since they are created in 2009) for their graphics operations on the walls of the 
city, which has installed dozens of portraits clearly visible from the Mayor of Madrid 
printed trash bags in one of the dirtiest places in the city.

Other rallies are planned in different districts and neighborhoods of the city in the 
coming days.

The crackdown began to be felt in the early days: the arrests of strikers reached 18 since 
the beginning of the conflict and identity checks officially exceed 250. Many of these 
police actions are a result of fires containers (over a hundred, including 14 last night), 
one of them having landed on fire in front doors of a bank branch in the district of 
Vallecas. Some vehicles of various outsourcing companies have also been taken out of 
service (and other small fires sabotage).

For now, the garbage collectors and truck drivers are not in motion, because they depend 
on other businesses not directly affected by the outsourcing contract. But they could be 
mobilized from November 17 according to a union source.

The legal deadline for the negotiation of the collective redundancy procedure (ERE, 
Expediente of Regulaci?n de Empleo) ends on November 15. According to the legislation, 
without agreement with the unions, businesses can make the layoffs from that date.

The strike continues

The "labor front" will he? Already, the Workers' Commissions (CCOO) dragged their feet at 
the start of the conflict, delaying its release a week supposedly to try to get something 
through negotiation. Already, UGT organized boycott of all initiatives of solidarity and 
street protests that escape him, saying the striking workers (and others) not to go 
because they are illegal and therefore prohibited and dangerous ...

Workers lose an average of 60 euros per day of strike. Long will they? This is the 
challenge fund strength and the financial support that is taking place. They say they are 
committed because they have no choice but to fight. It is also an area that has a 
tradition of struggle and that has been the scene of several major conflicts in the last 
decade. Evidence that, despite the divisions in several boxes of subcontracting supposed 
neutralize the conflict, it is possible to override, to organize to fight. They and they 
can also count on true solidarity because many people are with them, despite the 
inconvenience.

Solidarity that unfolds on a territorial basis, organized by neighborhoods, with local and 
mobilization of a whole network initiatives, collectives, movements and unions struggle 
for historical neighborhood associations to the most recent groupings emerged from the 
crisis and the challenge of political power as the meeting of indignant and it remains in 
the struggles for housing, against cuts, against the privatization of health care, etc..

To be continued ...

On November 14, 2013
___

An example call to solidarity, Lavapies

Proclamation of the Assembly of Lavapies in support of the strike by workers cleaning the 
streets and public gardens in Madrid

As an Assembly of Popular Lavapies [popular area of ??Madrid], we felt it very important 
to show our clear support to all those working in the street cleaning and public gardens 
that are on strike in Madrid. They are the ones who take care of our streets, our streets 
and our parks, and thus ourselves. We need to be together. Their struggle is ours.

This is why we have posted in the streets the following proclamation, and we encourage 
collective and assemblies from other neighborhoods to reappropriate and to sign and modify 
as they wish to express their support in their own streets. For assemblies interested, 
please write to: asamblea.popular.lavapies @ gmail.com or: lavapiesconlahuelga@gmail.com

Proclamation

Faced with the strike of cleaning streets and gardens of Madrid,
the Popular Assembly of Lavapies
INFORMED:

1 ? What major companies stink - OHL-Scan, FCC, Sacyr-Valoriza and EUB-Ferrovial - have 
embraced the city. They are the lords and masters of concrete, construction, 
infrastructure, industry, to the point of reaching absorb our cleanliness and our gardens.

2 ? What these big stink companies, despite their considerable profits, after refusing to 
renew contracts for 350 workers and have been unemployed, want to dismiss 1,144 workers 
cleaning the streets and parks of Madrid, and reduce 43% of the salary of those who will 
not be sent to unemployment.

3 ? What's all done with the complicity of the Mayor and the Municipality responsible 
ultimate service and brawlers "savings" that always come at the expense of working families.

4 ? What workers in STRIKE UNLIMITED are an example to us all. No sane person can not 
remain unresponsive to their movement.

5 ? What with the strike, we can see how the makeup falls and appears before our eyes all 
the crap that produces industrial society, capitalist and consumerist, we've created.

6 ? What we see today is only a taste of Madrid dirty and dry will befall our 
neighborhoods, if we lose the strike and they reach there has fewer workers / Artists and 
that in the worst conditions.

And that is why the Popular Assembly of Lavapies
DECIDED THAT:

1 ? If workers who take care of our streets and in our gardens (and us) are on strike, we 
will support them to the ultimate consequences, we will be with them and them in the 
pickets and demonstrations and we will do everything that comes to mind to not to abandon 
them.

2 ? If resources are not allocated, then we will allocate the filth, we will bring them to 
the feet of Lords, all the way to their banks, their palaces and offices.

3 ? If the strikers continue to be arrested, we will be growing daily in the street. The 
reason and the anger of workers should not be silenced by the police, judges, employers, 
the media, politicians and union leaders.

4 ? If the strike ends, it will be because we have won, not by the agreements signed in 
the backs of workers / Artists. We will support now and always assemblies of workers and 
union bases.

LIVE THE STRIKE!

? Lavapies, the 9th day of November in the Year 2013.


Union strength : information here

Information collected and translations: XYZ OCLibertaire

(Free and encouraged reproduction)

Photo: http://oclibertaire.free.fr/spip.php?article1438