Portuguese and Spanish unions in talks over ‘Iberian basic strike’
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Portuguese and Spanish commerce unions are involved with a view to organising a doable “Iberian basic strike”, Unai Sordo, secretary-general of CCOO (Comisiones Obreras), mentioned on Thursday in an interview with the programme “Los Desayunos” (source in Portuguese) produced by Spanish broadcaster RTVE and the EFE information company.
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According to the Spanish union chief, Portuguese unions are contemplating calling a basic strike on 11 November. An identical stoppage has already been scheduled within the neighbouring nation for that date, bringing collectively, amongst others, Spain’s two most important commerce union confederations, CCOO and UGT (General Workers’ Union).
The intention, Sordo defined, is thus to present form to an “Iberian basic strike”. However, he burdened that it will rely on the choice to be taken by commerce union organisations in Portugal. “It is as much as the Portuguese to resolve whether or not, ultimately, we be part of forces in a mobilisation throughout the Iberian Peninsula that might even be historic”, the CCOO secretary-general mentioned.
Jokingly, he additionally referred to the one Portuguese author to have gained the Nobel Prize in Literature, José Saramago, who not solely spent nearly 20 years of his life residing in Lanzarote, within the Canary Islands, but additionally maintained an inseparable hyperlink with the progressive actions of his time. “If they maintain [the strike] in Portugal, we’re going to name it the Saramago strike”, Sordo concluded.
The basic strike in Spain on 11 November has been a foregone conclusion for a number of weeks, having been scheduled for 18 days earlier than the snap elections known as by the nation’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, after parliament rejected measures proposed by the national government to sort out the housing disaster.
Both international locations have, in truth, seen varied initiatives to defend that proper and to oppose the rising price of residing. Taking inspiration from the protests that started, at the end of September, in Puerta del Sol, some of the well-known squares within the Spanish capital, Madrid, hundreds of demonstrators spent a number of nights tenting out within the centres of Portuguese cities akin to Porto and Lisbon.
The calls for in each circumstances are the identical: protesters are calling for respectable housing at reasonably priced costs, with many complaining that having a job is now not sufficient to have the ability to lease a flat within the main city centres.
