The mayor of Arrecife, Cándido Reguera, has managed to stop the strike planned by the Urbaser waste collection workers for next Monday, after meeting with company executives and union members. In the meeting, the mayor has committed to take to the plenary the price review corresponding to the year 2008, foreseen in the contract that the City Council maintains with the company.
The labor agreement that the workers of waste collection of the capital have links their salary increases to that price review and, as the review of 2008 did not occur, Urbaser did not apply to the workers "the increase of the real Canary Islands CPI, of 2 percent to the salaries of the year 2010, as well as the salary review of 2.5 percent for the salaries of 2011".
Faced with this situation, which generated a call for an indefinite strike by the Works Council, Reguera has committed to take to the plenary this price review of 2008 before May 6, when he has the corresponding technical report. "I have asked them to postpone their decision until that day and they have accepted it," said Reguera.
Almost 100,000 euros more per year
The price review, as Reguera explained, was already foreseen in the original contract that the former mayor María Isabel Déniz signed with the company in 2002. Thus, the increases were carried out until 2007, when the government group changed and stopped being applied.
Now, the one of 2008 will be carried out, which is the one that the workers have linked to the salary increases in their agreement. "The ones from later years will be carried out later, although they are of less importance, because the indexes have fallen," said the mayor.
Even so, the price review of 2008 implies an increase of around 8,000 euros per month, which means an increase of 96,000 euros per year, for a company that currently charges about 700,000 euros per month from the City Council (about 8 million per year) for all the services it performs in Arrecife.
The spokesman of the Urbaser Works Council, Bernardo Santana, has positively valued the meeting, although he pointed out that "we will have to wait and see what happens". And, if Reguera does not fulfill what was promised, the Urbaser workers will go on strike from May 9. "If I tell you that I am not skeptical I would be lying, but I trust that it will go ahead," said Santana.
