ARCHIVED - Cadiz metal workers strike: pre-agreement could mean the beginning of the end
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
Hopes of a solution draw closer as work stoppages, picket lines and confrontations with police are put on pause
After nine days of strikes in Cádiz province, unions and employers’ associations have come to the first stage of an agreement on wage rises, calling a temporary halt to protests in the streets.
Pre-agreement in metal workers’ dispute
Unions and employers in the metal working sector reached a “pre-agreement” on Wednesday November 24 after another twelve hours of intense talks at the negotiating table Cádiz, which may soon bring the strikes to an end if it is ratified into a full and binding agreement.
Although there were previously reports of a breakdown in negotiations, it seems there has now been a breakthrough. According to the CCOO union in a statement, the pre-agreement reached “maintains the purchasing power” of workers, since the employers side proposed a rise of 1.5% and the unions “have achieved a wage increase of 2% per year which will be reviewed in 2024”.
This initial compromise between the parties is still being drafted, though, and must be ratified in an assembly of workers before the strike that began on November 16 can be officially called off.
The secretary general of the Federation of Industry of CCOO Andalucía, José Hurtado, said that “this pre-agreement is a turning point for workers in the industry in Cádiz” and added that “thanks to negotiation and tireless mobilisation, it has been possible to reach a pre-agreement that is much closer to the positions that the workers’ representatives defended than to those of the employers”.
Strikes in the streets escalated
At the same time, the small town of Puerto Real in Cádiz is in the national spotlight after riot police used extreme dispersion tactics and violence like deploying a tank against metal workers protesting for higher wages.
In the neighbourhood of Río San Pedro, for example, the Policía Nacional began to charge the strikers and use smoke grenades and firing rubber bullets around 9.15am yesterday when they blocked off the entrance to the Navantia yards, just after children from the El Columpio infant school next door had gone into class.
The streets of this residential area of Puerto Real hosted one of the tensest moments of the metal strike so far, when the agents dispersed the workers using a Medium Wheeled Armoured Vehicle, a sort of armoured tank that used to belong to the Army and was donated to the Policía Nacional.
Spain’s central government has come under fire from across the political spectrum for the use of such heavy-handed tactics.
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