CC OO and CGT call a strike on the railway this Christmas

CC OO and CGT call a strike on the railway this Christmas

The 24-hour work stoppages planned for Renfe and ADIF will be carried out on December 21 and January 7, although neither UGT nor the train drivers support them for now.

  Strikes in transport have almost become a classic of holidays, whether summer or winter as in this case. On Monday, CC OO announced the convocation of unilateral 24-hour strikes on the railway for the next days of December 21 and January 7, that is, right at the beginning and end of the Christmas period. The reason, as reported by the union this morning, is the aging of the workforce and the lack of sufficient staff to undertake different tasks.

  The protest extends to both operator Renfe and public society ADIF, which manages both the network of roads and stations. The central complainant complains in his statement of the "continuous decrease in staff" in both companies in recent years, together with a labor group of fairly advanced age (its average Renfe around 55 years and in ADIF somewhat less) and a "Imbalance" in jobs due to gender - women only represent 13% -. Therefore, the first claim is that the replacement rate exceeds 100%, that is, that it begins to create net employment.

However, they have already set a figure for their goal of increasing the number of employees in both companies: 5,000 more, that is to say, almost 18% more than the 28,000 that are currently added by Renfe and ADIF. His argument is that precisely that was the loss of employment in them during the years of the crisis and has not yet been replaced. They also demand a reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours per week, a criterion agreed by the unions of the public function and the Government for the State Budget of 2018 but that -critique- in the case of the railroad would not be applying

On the 14th the controllers will also protest and a week later the railway controllers in the administrator of the network, the aforementioned ADIF, will do so

These claims are shared, in general, by the rest of the plants represented in Renfe and ADIF, although they differ in methods. CGT, however, did join the strike at the last minute despite having been left alone in its last call for work stoppages. That was at the end of October - on the eve of the All Saints Bridge - and for reasons similar to the current ones, but it had a small follow-up among the workers, although Renfe suspended almost 300 services as a precaution, a third of them in AVE and Long distance.

UGT wants more dialogue

In UGT, the majority union in the railroad, they prefer to wait and make new attempts at dialogue with the Ministry of Public Works, which they see in CC OO, however, practically exhausted. They argue in this regard that after the change of Executive in June and the coming to power of the PSOE gave a respite in their protests as a vote of confidence to the new managers, but not see progress half a year later have decided to move into action . Finally, the Machinists' union Semaf does not usually support strikes and when it has done some it has been due to specific problems of this group.

In this way, the tracking of these two dates of work stoppages at Christmas is uncertain at the moment. The anteroom, although smaller, will be the strike of 24 hours convened by the inspectors of Renfe for the next day 14, with which they also protest for the reduction of their workforce and for which the Ministry of Development has set a minimum services of up to 78% of the staff in the AVE and Long Distance routes, as well as in the Cercanías. In addition, ADIF railway traffic controllers are called to three days of work stoppages this month (days 13, 21 and 28) also claiming an increase in the number of troops to redistribute work shifts.