The representatives of CCOO, UGT and USO have demanded this Wednesday, on the occasion of the upcoming May 1st, better salaries and working conditions that allow to achieve quality employment in the islands. They will do so through a concentration throughout the Canary Islands, on the occasion of the International Workers' Day. The event, covered under the slogan 'For full employment: Less working hours, better wages'.
The general secretary of UGT Canarias, Manuel Navarro, has demanded the "improvement and reduction of working hours and the positive impulse in the contract conditions of part-time workers" in addition to the "need to achieve the objective of full employment", "very complicated by the conditions of the Canary Islands" and for which he has demanded greater economic diversification "because if not the possibilities are almost non-existent".
Navarro highlighted the "effectiveness of the application of the labor reform that closes the year with 42.9% of permanent contracts" and the "increase in the minimum interprofessional wage", 54% more than in 2008, which "fortunately has been very positive" for the pockets of the Canarian families, and also, he has delved, has "dragged upwards the salary tables of the collective agreements".
However, despite these good macroeconomic data, he emphasized that in the Canary Islands "one in three inhabitants live below the poverty line, in the need to avoid double-speed salaries by provinces with the upward disappearance of salaries in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and in the concern for the sector of the cleaning ladies", who "daily work poorly paid and poorly protected" and to whom he has encouraged to join the fight.
In addition, they have demanded the application of the European Social Charter with respect to dismissals and has anticipated a favorable judgment where the dismissal will be regularized for the benefit of the dismissed person.
For her part, the secretary of organization of USO Canarias, Itahisa Torres, has announced that her union will only have a concentration in Tenerife and has taken advantage of the day to "denounce the low quality of employment, which has undergone many improvements but remains precarious" and for which she has indicated that effective policies are needed.
She has advocated for the recognition of "family reconciliation" and has delved into the "spiral of loss of 4% of purchasing power in the Canary Islands" with "a job disguised as indefinite that is temporary" and with trial periods that are not overcome to avoid long-term hiring, so she has asked for "employment without fine print".
She also had a memory "for the forgotten sector" of the bus drivers for tourists, where she said that staff is not increased with records of 16 million visitors. The general secretary of CCOO Canarias, Inocencio González, has demanded to consolidate what has been achieved and to diversify a distribution of wealth "absolutely unfair" that is reflected in collective bargaining in addition to demanding to break the gender gap in employment and mitigate youth unemployment with the aim of "not going back on what it has cost to achieve".
CCOO, UGT and USO have flatly rejected the criticisms of absenteeism and have argued that "if workers get so sick it is because their occupational health is not valued", so they have demanded to improve their workplaces and avoid adding figures to the 3 deaths "due to preventable work accidents" that the Canary Islands has registered in this 2024.
