More than enough reasons! General strike!

Confederación General del Trabajo, 22 June 2002

The Reform of Unemployment Protection and the Employment Law imposed by the government means yet another attack on the working class in general and in particular on the most disadvantaged social groups: the unemployed and those with unstable employment. With this reform the PP, the conservative party in national government, is taking giant steps towards making the job market even more precarious:

• The obligation to accept any job, whether or not it fits previous training or work experience, with no choice, no possibility of refusal, whatever the conditions may be, under threat of losing unemployment or social security payments.

• The increase in the Geographical Mobility of unemployed people, who will be obliged to accept jobs up to 30km or two hours from their home.

• The movement towards FREE DISMISSAL, removing the possibility of receiving the salary the employer is obliged to pay in the case of a court sentence of unfair dismissal, except if the court rules that the worker should be readmitted into the company (i.e. hardly ever!).

• The freezing of and increased difficulty in receiving the farm-workers benefit, with the short-term aim of removing it completely.

• The drastic reduction in unemployment benefit cover for seasonal workers and for returning emigrants.

• The introduction of the possibility of being paid unemployment benefit while working, forcing workers, in specific cases, to work whilst receiving the dole, saving employers from having to pay this part of their salary.

• The introduction of even more precarious forms of temporary contracts.

We are faced with the imposition of a purely neo-liberal economic and social model in which generalised precariousness and the exclusion of wider and wider sectors has become the norm. The government is legislating for the large companies, which it favours so they can increase their profits. Meanwhile the vast majority of society becomes poorer: workers, the unemployed, those with unstable employment, immigrants, young people looking for their first job, women in the hidden economy or working part-time, hourly- and daily-paid workers and farm workers For the CGT, stopping this renewed attack is essential if we do not want our rights to be trodden underfoot. In addition, however, we must fight against other attacks which have not had the necessary response:

• Employment Reforms: making dismissal cheaper by reducing compensation to 33 days per year worked and a maximum of 24 months. Increasing temporary contracts in Public Administration. Flexibility of part-time contracts

• Pensions Agreement: pacted by employers, the government and CCOO. Increases the number of years employment used to calculate the basic pension to be the workers entire working life. Elimination of obligatory retirement at 65.

• Immigration Law: condemns thousands of people to a situation of exploitation and marginalisation as they are refused even the most basic of Human Rights (association, movement, equality in the eyes of the law ). And the new proposed law to make illegal immigration a crime

• The Law for Universities, the Law for Quality in Education, and the Further Education Law: convert public education into a subsidiary of private education, introducing economic criteria to the detriment of quality and, additionally classist and reactionary values.

• Union-Government Agreement 2002: signed by CCOO, UGT and the Government. Imposes the freezing of salaries, working hours to be calculated on an annual basis with the distribution of hours left in the hands of employers, total geographical and job mobility.

• Privatisation of Public Services. Over the last few years the greater part of the public sector has been dismantled and privatised in favour of the friends of the government and Aznar.

• Cuts in Public Freedom: The government of the PP has cut or modified much of the public freedom won after the dictatorship, repressing with severity social protest of any sort: workers, students, pensioners, social movements

• Attacks on the Environment. The National Hydrological Plan is waiting to be passed despite the opposition of hundreds of thousands of people directly affected by it. We must not forget what the reality of our situation is: The government's economic and social policy, exemplified in the field of economics by Budgets that become more regressive every year and a tax reform that serves the interests of capital, and the complicity shown by the CCOO-UGT institutional union model, has meant that the last few years have been of permanent decline:

• Continual loss of spending power (once again the forecast for inflation 2% for 2002 has been out-run by the real rate of inflation

2.1% in May with an annual cumulative figure of 3.6%, which is considerably higher than the average of 2.9% pacted in collective agreements). A loss which is especially significant in Public Services employees who earn the minimum wage (the lowest in the EU) and for the lowest salary earners.

• The rate of unemployment is the highest in the EU. We have the highest rate of temporary employment (33%) and new contracts (92%). In the first quarter of this year unemployment has increased by 189,300 and 65,000 jobs have been destroyed.

• Every day five people die in accidents at the workplace. There are five thousands accidents per day, thirty-three of which are serious. We have double the number of accidents than the European average.

• The highest rate of harassment in the workplace, mostly suffered by women. The employment rate of women is double that of men's despite their rate of “activity” being the lowest in the EU, the average salary is 30% lower than a man's and the number of temporary contracts and employment in “atypical” jobs is higher. It is possible and essential to turn this situation round and the CGT believes in a sustained process of mobilisation and protest, in which a 24-hour general strike is not just an isolated event. A mobilisation which every day includes wider and wider sectors of society: workers, ecologists, students, immigrants, unemployed people with the aim of organising a broad, deep and continuous social response to the neoliberal policies of the PP