The 17 Iberia workers in Lanzarote affected by the employment regulation file presented by the company in Madrid and approved by the Ministry of Labor have already been dismissed. The reaction of the Strike Committee was to extend the indefinite strike from four to seven days a week starting next November 4 and, probably, to resume the stoppages immediately on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. The Committee had suspended the strike approximately two months ago and since then the airport has not experienced chaotic days.
The spokesperson for the strikers, León Fajardo, asserted that Iberia has everything "so controlled in Madrid" that the Ministry approved the employment regulation file to fire 28 workers in the Canary Islands, of which 17 work in Lanzarote. "Based on steaks, even the Ministry accepts situations as controversial as approving dismissals in Lanzarote when there is a resolution from the Labor Inspectorate that asks for 50 temporary workers to become permanent," commented the union leader.
Demand from the Government of the Canary Islands
In addition, he recalled that the Government of the Canary Islands sued the company itself to make 67 employees permanent.
If the strike resumes, chaos will return to the Island's airport, as the services provided by Iberia's handling to 27 charter companies that fly to Lanzarote would be affected.
Fajardo recalled that the public administrations invited Iberia's executives to the Island on three occasions to try to resolve the conflict by promoting dialogue with the workers. In the first, the company "left the public institutions stranded", in the second, Fajardo stressed, "said it did not want to negotiate", and in the third "did not accept the proposal that an arbitration commission decide the solution to the conflict".
Aetur asks for sanity
The president of the Lanzarote Federation of Tourist Entrepreneurs (Aetur), Gerardo Fontes, without going into whether or not anyone is right, asks for sanity from both Iberia and its workers. The employers' association will pass a letter to the Government of the Canary Islands so that it puts an end once and for all to a conflict that threatens to trample on the image of the Island as a tourist destination and ruin the good forecasts for the autumn-winter season.
