“We believe that Lanzarote Bus workers are not involved in this”. This is how Intersindical Canaria responded to the complaint filed by the company Adomari Bus with the Civil Guard, for a crime of damage to its buses, which dawned last Saturday with broken windows and punctured tires. The company pointed to striking workers of Lanzarote Bus, since they claim that they had previously received threats, for having started to provide one of the services that were not being covered due to that strike.
In fact, he assured that there are even messages and audios sent by Lanzarote Bus workers to one of his employees. “I don't think that existed, and if the company says it has reported the incident to the Civil Guard, then the authority will find out if they are or not. If they are, each one will assume the consequences of what they have done,” said the secretary of Social Action of the Transportation Federation of Intersindical Canaria, José Manuel Moreno, after being consulted by La Voz.
However, he insisted that he “highly doubts” that Lanzarote Bus workers are involved. In this regard, he defends that when there is a strike “many people join who do not belong to the sector and who take advantage of anything to vent with any type of acts”. “We are not going to be controlling all the people of Lanzarote, there is everything on the island”, he added, also pointing out that there may be Adomari workers who have “some problem with the company” or who have been fired and who “take advantage of these times”
He even suggested that it could have been “someone from the company to collect the insurance policy”. “If they doubt the workers, I can also doubt the business side,” he said.
In addition, he defended the “attitude” of the Lanzarote Bus workers in this strike, assuring that they have not responded to the “provocations” of “some scab who wanted to go out” to work.
Regarding Adomari Bus, he did not want to comment on the fact that it was providing one of the services that Lanzarote Bus provided and that had been suspended due to the strike. “Whether they have hired it or not, we do not know and we are not going to find out. If the company covers these services, I think it is good that they cover them, I am not going to give any opinion on that,” he said.
Regarding the fact that Adomari Bus claims that this has generated first threats and then an attack on its vehicles, the representative of Intersindical Canaria insists that “the authority will say whether or not they were Lanzarote Bus workers”. “We never want this to happen”, he assured.
“Workers will not give in unless the split shift is removed”
Regarding the strike, José Manuel Moreno affirms that “the workers will not give in unless the split shift is removed”. Along with that demand, they also demand a salary increase, which has not been updated for years.
On this last point, Moreno does recognize “some progress” in the negotiations. Specifically, the company proposes “a five percent increase” from January, and “a twelve percent” from June. However, he wanted to emphasize that in August 2015 they discounted, “without any warning”, 222 euros in the payroll of each worker.
“We have told the company actively and passively, that the economic issue could be defended in an assembly, and that the workers would accept it”, said Moreno, who added that “an agreement could be reached” if the company contemplated the elimination of the split shift. With this, he considers that “they could get closer to the economic amount proposed by the company.”
