• Unions to protest PP ‘intransigence’ in negotiating labour law changes
• Three-days of rallies, marches to culminate in Sunday demo in Madrid
As a majority of opposition deputies scored a symbolic victory in Spain’s Congress Tuesday, calling for the complete rescission of the “labour reform” law enacted in 2012 by the conservative Partido Popular (PP), the country’s largest labour federations have called their members out on the streets for three-days of sequenced protest rallies over the PP’s apparent intransigence to negotiate changes to the controversial law.
During a joint assembly of more than 1,500 delegates of the Unión General de Trabajadores (General Workers Union, UGT) and the Comisiones Obreras (Workers’ Commissions, CCOO), labour leaders announced they were upping the pressure on the PP to negotiate changes to the 2012 law, beginning with protest rallies on Thursday in front of government offices nationwide. On Friday, the protests will focus on government offices in the central Spanish region of Castilla-León and on Sunday the labour organisations have called for a massive march in the Spanish capital, Madrid.
Speaking to reporters following the joint meeting, the CCOO’s secretary of organization and outreach, Fernando Lezcano, said the labour unions are exasperated with what they say is a government attempt to “whitewash its image” through insignificant changes to the 2012 law, which was passed over the objections of all other parties by the absolute majority of PP deputies in the last session of Congress.
On Tuesday, a majority of deputies in the current Congress supported a resolution put forward by the Socialist party (PSOE) that calls for the complete rescinding of the 2012 law, paving the way for a showdown between the opposition and the governing party when measures to reform the labour law are expected to be introduced and debated in the lower house of Spain’s parliament.
► ► CLICK ABOVE TO WATCH CCOO’S FERNANDO LEZCANO ► ►
► ► CLICK ABOVE TO WATCH UGT’S PEPE ÁLVAREZ ► ►
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