Comisiones Obreras and UGT have asked the population of the Canary Islands this Thursday to massively support the general strike of November 11, so that the country is "paralyzed" and awareness is raised that it is called so that the "chaos" in housing and wages does not worsen after the general elections.
The general secretaries in the Canary Islands of CCOO, Vanesa Frahija, and UGT, Manuel Navarro, explained at a press conference from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria the importance that this call has for them, denying that it is a "political strike" as many in the "right-wing opposition" have said, but it does have that political side because unions are organized politically.
"It is clearly a labor strike, but without ruling out the political side, because every social movement is political, has always been, since the origin of history. Therefore, we are not afraid to say that this strike also has a political character, because we are organized politically," Navarro argued.
His CCOO counterpart reaffirmed the same idea and assured that they will not allow the working class to be criminalized for supporting the strike.
"Is it politics to look after the interests of citizens to obtain improvements in their living conditions? Well, it is politics. Is it politics to demand that people, our people in the Canary Islands, have access to decent housing and do not spend their wages on rent or mortgages? Well, it is doing politics. Is it also doing politics to demand an improvement in the welfare state, in the social shield, in quality public healthcare and education? Well, it is doing politics," Frahija insisted.
Both she and Navarro defended that this general strike is against the institutions and political parties that have gone against the social and labor rights of the population, and in this sense, they have warned of what may be to come.
Thus, Navarro said that the general strike "is against any body that has generated this chaos in housing and wages," but also so that awareness is raised that "this chaos can worsen" after the electoral call scheduled for November 29 in case certain political forces achieve a majority to govern.
For his part, Frahija has pointed out that the mobilizations are also against "those who have betrayed in the Congress of Deputies by voting against the royal decrees, where they have been accomplices in putting millions of people in our State at risk regarding the issue of housing and rights".
"Voting against social measures for exclusively partisan reasons... that is called being a traitor," he stated.
Special circumstances in the Canary Islands
Both Navarro and Frahija have also summarized the particular issues that make this general strike especially significant for the Canary Islands.
Thus, they have lamented that in the Canary Islands the problem caused by housing is especially dramatic, to which is added a greater impact on prices due to the island and outermost region status of the territory, and the fact that they have the lowest wages in the entire country.
In the housing problem, Navarro has pointed out, there are autonomous communities that are more strained and others that are not so much, and some that are growing in population while others are losing inhabitants. For him, the Canary Islands are among those that are increasing in population and, therefore, are more strained.
And for this reason, they have insisted on bringing to the table the measures they have already proposed in the past: mobilizing the existing housing stock, with a census that, in their opinion, has 211,000 empty houses throughout the archipelago, with 20% of which on rent could solve the problem.
They also demand a reordering of the territory and a commitment to vertical construction with the regeneration of existing neighborhoods, in a territory like the Canary Islands that is finite.
For all these reasons, Frahija has announced, this Friday the adherence of the majority trade union forces in the Canary Islands to the strike call will be registered before the General Directorate of Labor in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, from which he hopes that "abusive minimum services" will not be imposed so that all of society can take to the streets and say "enough is enough".
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