The general secretary of UGT in Lanzarote, César Reyes, announced this Friday on Radio Lanzarote that the cleaning workers of the company Rilca, who perform their duties at the Alcalde Rafael Cedrés school, in Tías, are on indefinite strike since Thursday. This strike will also probably extend from September 30 to the cleaning of municipal spaces, such as the Town Hall, as well as the cleaning and maintenance of the municipality's gardens.
According to César Reyes, the cleaning employees of the Alcalde Rafael Cedrés school will not abandon the indefinite strike until the company Rilca guarantees them that "they will be paid on time and that they will be paid what they are owed." But this problem could get bigger, since the workers who perform their task in municipal sites have also been without pay for three months.
"The problem is entrenched. The company does not respond, blaming the City Council for not paying it, saying that it owes a lot of money. But the workers only want to be paid in a timely manner, as the Law says," defended the general secretary of UGT on the island, who lamented that these problems between the workers and the company are already "too common." "We have been suffering non-payments and continuous delays in payrolls for a year," he stressed.
Thus, César Reyes will present the pre-notice of indefinite strike next week for the workers who clean in municipal areas. "The City Council has been aware of these facts for months, but the matter has become entrenched and nothing has been done to provide a definitive solution to the problem," he insisted. And, for César Reyes, the action of the Tías City Council in this matter has not been sufficient. "It has not been a quick decision," he lamented.
Therefore, César Reyes considered that one of the solutions would be for the Tías City Council to rescind the cleaning service and take it away from Rilca. "This same business group was awarded the service in a somewhat irregular manner, because in principle the workers were subject to the company Salimpa, but finally the staff ended up being transferred to another company in the same group. Neither the workers' representatives nor the City Council were aware of this," Reyes criticized.
A definitive solution
"A solution must be put in place now. All administrations are aware of the company's situation and it is very bad. Throughout this summer we have seen in the Canary Islands that there are workers who have even gone on hunger strike because they are not paid their salary. Right now we have 28 workers from this company who are going to be on the street in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Therefore, we want a definitive solution," Reyes insisted, who assured that employees cannot live another year "in this uncertainty."
In addition to Tías, the company Rilca also operates in Arrecife. And although the capital's City Council announced the seizure of the service and intends to put it out to tender, César Reyes says that this has been "delayed in time." In the case of the municipality of Arrecife, the workers are not in as critical a situation as in Tías. "In Arrecife, employees will receive their salary today," César Reyes explained.
