End of the strike workers cleaning and public gardens of Madrid Victory halftone (fr)

Updated ---- the 12th day of the strike , the workers decided to return to work mostly . 
They got what they considered the most important claim : the withdrawal plan layoffs of 
1134 people, or nearly 20 % of the workforce . Certainly win, but subdued . In return, 
they conceded the conventional wage freeze for 5 years and collective redundancies 
"part-time " ( 45 working days per year ), which will result in lower wages and real 
income until 2017. ---- When ended the period of negotiation of the ERE [ the collective 
redundancy procedure ] , set at 17h this Friday, November 15 , no agreement had been 
reached between the three companies and subcontracting the three unions ( CCOO , UGT and 
CGT ) authorized to negotiate.

Companies no longer proposed that 296 redundancies ( instead of 1134 ) , 45 days of 
temporary unemployment (technical ) per year , falling lower wages (5.9%) , but the unions 
refused to sign .

For its part, the municipality, which had set the minimum proportion of 40% services for 
scanning / street cleaning and 25% work in the public gardens, was that less than 70% of 
the minimum was actually achieved and she would put his threats : the intervention of the 
public company Tragsa ( under the Ministry of Agriculture ) if continuation of the strike .

Public and agency company to break the strike

From 4:00 in the morning, 200 workers (90 volunteers Tragsa employees and 110 hired for 
the occasion by means of a temporary box , the multinational Randstat ) started to 
intervene in the streets of Madrid, escorted by for 600 police , municipal and domestic , 
half owned by riot police . This team should be replaced at 11 h . The day before , on 
Friday afternoon , the ETT Randstat published a job offer 200 positions " to clean Madrid 
" paid 85 euros per day , with hours 4:00 am to noon or 1 hour 9:00 and the possibility of 
2 extra hours . At 20 hours, the 200 hires were made .

Recall that the enterprise services and environmental engineering, who has already 
intervened to break a strike by garbage collectors in Jerez de la Frontera (C?diz ) in 
November 2012 and in Seville in March 2013, knows itself a process of collective 
redundancies . Originally planned to 836 and 803 dismissals in Tragsa in its subsidiary 
Tragsatec or 1639 (about 20% of the workforce) , the volume of job losses would now be 820.

Some unions have indicated that they would file a complaint against this decision to 
involve the public company in the social conflict.

Worms, 2:00 am, sixty strikers who had gathered in the area of ??Legazpi to prevent yellow 
work were stopped by the police . But the yellow could intervene without causing incidents 
. In 24 hours, depending on the municipality , 460 tons of trash were removed.

two negotiations

Meanwhile , at 18 am , beginning a new negotiation meeting , this time on the renewal of 
the collective agreement, which expires on 30 November between the employers' association 
and trade unions in the sector . In the middle of the night, a preliminary agreement was 
within reach . It stipulate a wage freeze for 2013-2017 in exchange for retention, that is 
to say, a commitment by employers to not dismiss anyone. For cons , the 350 jobs lost in 
August are not recovered . And nothing specific about lower wages required by employers 
and other items ( unpaid premiums vacation days ... ) .

At this stage , the main concession workers is wage freeze for 5 years ( from 2013 to 2017 
, the term of the collective agreement) in exchange for retention.

With this pre- agreement , at least on the collective agreement on wages , payment of 
premiums delays and other points on the holiday and replacement in case of absence , it is 
close to the negotiations on the conflict ( for 3 of the 4 sub-contractors ) that is to 
say the withdrawal of the dismissal procedure . This has been another meeting on Saturday 
from 11am.

The labor-management agreement to end the conflict

Another discussion on the one hand, the ERA and other other factors behind the conflict.

After a long meeting , which ended on Sunday morning by employers , unions agree ( CCOO , 
UGT , CGT, CSIF and USO) announcing the end of the strike , it appears that :

layoffs are canceled in exchange for a wage freeze for 5 years.
the principle of wage cuts is maintained and they result in partial unemployment of 45 
days per year , which amounts to a decrease in the annual salary of approximately 17.5% , 
without compensation ( compensation) , that for a period 4 years. Nominal wages are not 
affected (they do not increase ) but the reality of the amount of wages is a real decline .
With this fact incentives for voluntary departures (with compensation of 28 days per year 
worked to a maximum of 22 monthly payments ) , voluntary leave partially compensated (30 
to 50% of net earnings for the respective periods 5 and 10 years ) , voluntary early 
retirement , greater flexibility in laying the annual holiday , payment of salaries and 
bonuses delay was about 1000 euros per worker on average.
Saturday in the afternoon , more than a thousand people demonstrated in the district of 
Vallecas behind a banner saying "Our workstations are not negotiable , they defend ," a 
local initiative supported by some unions. At the end of the course to the Borough Hall , 
a bonfire was lit , which was burned in a model of the Mayor of Madrid and several 
workwear and cleaning of parks and gardens. Meanwhile, hundreds of strikers gathered 
around the building of the Labour Inspectorate of Madrid which took place the second 
negotiation. In the middle of the night, a hundred of them that were invited into the 
building were evicted by the police.

Towards the end of the conflict?

For three of the unions involved in the negotiation ( CCOO , UGT and CGT ) this agreement 
is a victory.
According to the leftist daily P?blico , the representative of the UGT, Roberto Tornamira 
, said he was " satisfied that the dismissals were removed from the table after the first 
hour of the morning " of the trading session. The representative of the CCOO , Felix 
Carrion , welcomed it was possible to " renegotiate the [ Eve ] was negotiated " and that 
" virtually nothing about the collective bargaining agreement is reached ." For his part, 
Juan Carlos del Rio , the head of the UGT , thanking "the support of workers and the 
support of the people of Madrid " , stressed that " layoffs and wage cuts can be avoided ".
The representative of the CGT ( anarcho -syndicalist ), Francisco Javier Palacios , this 
agreement " should be used for other community and other workers follow the same path." He 
added , " there is no reason to resign , or to bear the pay cuts or reduced rights or 
labor reforms , even if we impose . We must fight against all that . " According to him , 
the success of negotiations with the concessionaire companies is the result of " the unity 
of workers and trade unions " in this area of ??street cleaning and parks .

The agreement between the unions and the three companies outsourcing (FCC , OHL and Sacyr 
) would then be ratified by assemblies of workers.

Reading this result emphasizes the removal of redundancies ( which is true ) and 
cancellation of wage cuts , what is wrong (unless we stick to formal and conventional 
aspects) : the employers have succeeded in imposing a decline in real wages of about 17.5% 
decline in working hours that allows " ERE Temporal " introduced and systematized by the 
labor reform .

In the second negotiation, the employers' representatives have called on the table the 
requirement to lay between 350 and 350 workers by the CGT ( the 296 of the previous 
proposal ) , to offset the layoffs offset by other measures intensified labor and the 
elimination of bonuses and some benefits , which has made a point of attachment and 
conflict and allowed patrons to make a new blackmail, a give and take on the acceptance of 
the actual decline in wages through periods of unemployment unpaid .

These periods of partial unemployment (ERE Temporal ) are certainly compensated by the 
Inem ( Spanish employment center ) to 70 % of gross salary (about 50 % of the net ), but 
these periods LEAD proportionately fewer days off , the amount of annual premiums ( 
year-end , for example) and the calculation of working time compensable .

Meetings are in favor of stopping the strike.

Four meetings were convened at 16:30 to approve or reject the agreement between unions and 
employers directions of three business outsourcing . Mostly , workers approved the 
agreement and voted to end the strike . Neither the participation and voting results are 
known .

Immediately after , the mayor of Madrid has indicated its position. On the one hand , she 
is pleased that the strike ended with the reforms work that introduced the PP government , 
including the introduction of temporary redundancies that allow " to reduce labor costs , 
which can n ' did not exist before, " adding that" there were no layoffs due to the 
flexibility of the labor reform of government. " On the other, it requires a change in the 
laws that regulate the right to strike " to curb the damage that the strike has caused the 
citizens." "Citizens has she added , can not be taken hostage in a conflict like that 
which is now complete . We will not abandon our goal to give the people more services at a 
lower cost . " Except that on this point , the municipal budget cleaning enjoyed by 
private construction companies , was almost three times in 10 years (65 to 161 million 
euros ) , before declining this year.

provisional results

The results of the strike is generally said that workers have won a victory over what 
seemed to them the most important : maintaining workstations and the withdrawal of 
significant wage cuts planned or agitated as an additional threat. In the face of what the 
concessions are mainly blocking wages until 2017 and reduced real wages by 17.5% on an 
annual basis by the flexibility ( the suspension of the employment contract of 45 days 
worked per year ) . This should amount actually down nearly 9 % of revenues received 
annually since half the shortfall will be covered by the unemployment compensation system. 
But honor is safe : the schedule and agreed wage is not affected .

The other major concession : the non- readmission of 350 job cuts August 1 , claim that 
was also lost in the maze of various union channels between August and October and has 
itself disappeared negotiations .

The claim remunicipalisation of outsourced services since the 1990s the city was in the 
margin of the strike and some recovery, many of the unions did not want to hear about it , 
and they have nothing done - but three small unions Madrid , Sindicato de Comisiones Base 
( Cobas ) , Solidaridad Obrera (SO) and Alternativa Sindical de Trabajadores (AST ) - to 
organize even that of Madrid autonomous Community, to mobilize their members , not to 
mention an active and militant solidarity with the strikers .

While victory? Rather a victory than a defeat , it is clear. But a lackluster victory , 
because contrary to what is written here and there, there has been maintaining 
workstations against lower wages by " temporary layoffs " (corresponding to nine weeks per 
year) lower wages and income that dare not speak its name, but real.

Employer requirements were defeated but were they really that was proclaimed ? Threatening 
to fire 20 % of the workforce , to drop to 42 % of the wages actually received (half the 
nominal ) , threaten to extend the working hours in exchange for concessions on wages and 
jobs , businesses played skillfully . They tactically placed the bar very high in order to 
obtain as much as possible in a showdown became inevitable. A conflict could also serve 
them more from the mayor on the subject with the amount of contracts that you allocate us 
down this year for the first time , for the amount of service you want , that what can 
happen .

For his part, the mayor was able to exert enormous pressure on the strikers : first by 
trying to impose a minimum service (40% for street cleaning and 25% for maintenance of 
green spaces). Then, faced with the impossibility to achieve, thanks to the energetic 
action of pickets and some sabotage , involving free a public company, which itself had to 
hire temporary workers ( unemployed ) at the refusal its own employees to intervene 
(except 90 volunteers ) to officially achieve this minimum service in fact to break the 
strike on the same day ended the legal deadline for the negotiation of the dismissal 
procedure (ERE ) and which was quickly conclude that the renewal of the collective 
agreement ( December 1 ) .

Whether companies can meet their obligations with a lesser amount of days worked , plans 
to reorganize the teams intensified workload and remove some cleaning crews and pickups ( 
weekends , holidays) should allow them to do so without too much trouble . Unless the 
resistance of workers and residents is involved.

On November 18, 2013

Part 1: November 14, 2013 article

Indefinite strike workers cleaning and public gardens in Madrid

The 10th day

The strike began on November 5. It is massive, attended by more than 6000 sweepers and 
gardeners. It aims to set aside the dismissal of 20 % of the workforce and wage cuts of 
40% for those who remained . This is a strike of several companies outsourcing .
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