Lanzarote Bus has made the decision not to sit down to negotiate further with Intersindical Canaria or the Strike Committee, as a result of the vandalism suffered by some of the company's buses, after someone threw stones at the windshields of several vehicles.
“The situation has reached an unbearable extreme,” said Lanzarote Bus lawyer Gustavo Falero on Radio Lanzarote – Onda Cero. “They are school transport buses, imagine what could happen if there are children inside,” Falero pointed out, adding that the company “is not pointing to anyone” as the perpetrator of these acts, which they have already reported to the Police.
“I am not pointing to the drivers of Lanzarote Bus, most of them are great professionals and very polite and correct people,” he acknowledged, adding that it will be the Police who will carry out the investigation. However, he stresses that “whoever intends to bend the company in that way, is wrong.”
In relation to the requests of the strike committee, Falero has detailed that they have sent an offer to the Transport Federation of Intersindical Canaria, represented by José Manuel Moreno, in which they offer “a salary increase on account of the agreement of 129 euros per month from the month of February”. However, Falero has assured that “they have not responded”, stressing that the company “is not going to move any further.”
“All companies work the same in Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, and the only company in which they have gone on strike is Lanzarote Bus,” Falero criticized, who also assures that “they cannot understand” how Intersindical Canaria, being one of the majority unions in the sector, called a strike “suddenly”. “They arrived one day and said that we want this, and if not, on strike, without giving options for negotiation from the first moment.”
“Why doesn't IC sit down to negotiate the provincial discretionary transport agreement?”
Gustavo Falero also states that another of the issues that Lanzarote Bus does not understand is the request for a “company agreement” by Intersindical Canaria. “Why doesn't IC sit down to negotiate the provincial discretionary transport agreement?” he asked, pointing out that there is “an open table” for the transport agreement, and that the union has not sat down to negotiate.
“We have spoken with the federation and we have told them why they do not sit down to negotiate the agreement, and they tell us that they have not been called,” Falero maintained. In addition, he has assured that Lanzarote Bus has been saying “for years” that where the salary, working hours or vacations should be negotiated is “in the sector agreement”, not in a “company agreement.”
Falero has questioned that “IC has been rejecting company agreements for many years, and supporting the primacy of the sector agreement.”
“The ruling says that the company complies with working hours and salaries”
The fundamental request of the workers of Lanzarote Bus, throughout these 41 days of strike, has been the elimination of the split shift, assuring that there are workers “who exceeded 200 hours per month.”
In this sense, the company maintains that there is a ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, ratified by the Supreme Court, which says “that the company complies with working hours and salaries”. “He has said so in the collective dispute and in the individual lawsuits, the last of which arrived the day before yesterday,” he detailed.
In addition, Falero has criticized that Intersindical Canaria has a “very curious” way of counting the working day. “If you work in a company from 8 to 12 and from 4 to 8, your working day is 8 hours. They don't count like that, they also count from 12 to 4,” assured the lawyer of Lanzarote Bus, also assuring that during the waiting period between the departure of one shift and the entry of the next, the company “does not call the drivers” and that therefore, “they are not available to the company.”
Gustavo Falero has assured that he even offered José Manuel Moreno to make the schedules of the workers. “How are you going to try to adapt the demand to the company's schedules? There are services, and the schedules are made according to the services, that in all companies in the world, not only in Lanzarote Bus.”
In addition, he maintains that when the day is split it is “to very few workers.” In this sense, Falero has detailed that in the month of November, the day that the most shifts were split, of about 50 workers who were on duty that day, “the shift was split to 12”, while the rest of the days it is split to “6 or 7”.
“Saying that you work 18 hours is very good, but you have to see the documentation and we have offered to see it, to sit down and see it, and they have told us no”, he sentenced.
