UGT celebrated Labor Day by presenting its "Miguel Barrio Miralles" awards for trade union work. In this seventh edition, the award winner was Julio Hernández Machín, a colleague from the hospitality sector and a member of the union since the 1980s.
According to UGT, Julio Hernández has been a worker at the Hotel Salinas since 1978 and is currently a member of the Works Committee. He participated in the negotiations of the first provincial hospitality agreement and was part of the components that constituted the UGT Hospitality Federation, which was later joined by commerce. "From UGT Lanzarote we want to take advantage of this date to remember the thousands of people who, like our colleague Julio Hernández, continue to demand better living conditions for workers," said the general secretary of the union on the island, César Reyes, who wanted to thank and honor Julio Hernández "and all the women and men who, every day, in the world, face the powerful with no other purpose than the common good."
Before the award ceremony, the general secretary of UGT in Lanzarote read a manifesto in the assembly hall of the union's headquarters on the island.
In UGT's opinion, "it has been a very hard year, both in the health and in the economic and social fields, in which the pandemic has continued to manifest itself virulently and where public and essential services have continued to be key." For this reason, in the words of César Reyes, the union wanted to this May 1st "place, in maximum relevance, the world of work and make an explicit recognition to all the working people who have been part of those essential services, who in such a complicated moment and in the midst of a plague of infections have been at the forefront: saving lives; taking care of our elders in residences; guaranteeing the production, distribution and supply of food and other necessary products; performing cleaning and maintenance services; contributing to the safety of people; they have brought us home what we needed, they have guaranteed mobility or have been informing us, among others. A recognition that cannot remain a mere moral gesture, but must be accompanied by concrete actions and commitments that improve their working conditions; it is what is due and it is what we demand.”
"From UGT, during this long crisis, we have demonstrated our co-responsibility, not only through very active participation in social dialogue, developing social measures aimed at safeguarding employment and the productive fabric, whose maximum exponent has been the different agreements on ERTEs, although not the only ones, but also in the construction of a different way of informing and helping all working people in this hard pandemic," added the general secretary of UGT in Lanzarote, who nevertheless considers that "there is still a way to go" "Many people are in a situation of need today and the way out of the crisis must be carried out from a social perspective," he said.
Thus, César Reyes has stated that UGT will not stop "demanding that people be placed first in reconstruction policies in order to promote the change in the productive model that Lanzarote needs." "We believe that now it is time to deliver," he added.
Demands
Therefore, on this May 1st, the union has demanded "an ambitious reform in terms of labor contracting, which puts an end to the endemic temporality that especially affects women and young people."
Likewise, they demand "internal flexibility measures negotiated with the legal representation of the working people, which prevent companies from using dismissal as the only resource in the face of cyclical problems, and contribute to stability in employment, advancing towards a necessary transition to a new model of labor relations."
UGT also requests that "the public pension system" be supported and that "the unilateral reform that the PP Government implemented in 2013 with the aim of weakening the public pension system and reducing current and future benefits" be repealed. "Act on the system's income in line with the proposals of the Toledo Pact," he adds.
Likewise, it demands that unemployment benefits be improved "both at the contributory and at the assistance level" and that active employment policies be renewed "so that they have a greater and better impact on job creation, with agreements on quality youth employment guarantee policies."
Finally, UGT demands that a law on equal pay be approved and that "a shock plan against accidents at work be promoted, which stops the unacceptable figures of work accidents."
"These are the measures that we demand from UGT on this May 1st, 2021, bearing in mind that the labor and social effects of this crisis have hit the most vulnerable segments of the population harder, with a greater impact on sectors with a large presence of women in which job insecurity is more serious and which, to a large extent, are part of those services that we have considered essential throughout the pandemic. The country is in debt to all these people and that is why now it is time to deliver and improve their labor rights and their living conditions," they concluded from the union.
