After the declaration of Spanish Airports and Air Navigation (AENA) stating that the strike of the handling services at Lanzarote airport is unrelated to the public entity and is limited to Iberia and its employees, the response from the Strike Committee was immediate. León Fajardo, spokesperson for the Committee, said that if that were true, AENA would not support Iberia in bringing workers from other airports or sending airport security guards to prevent strikers from accessing the workplace. "What AENA needs to do is force Iberia to sit down and negotiate," he commented.
Fajardo assumed that the strike would be suspended from the moment the dialogues open. "There is a party that does not want to negotiate and we have to pressure them to come to the Island to sit down with us," added the union leader, who does not understand why the airport director, Dionisio Canomanuel, met this Tuesday with the General Directorate of AENA and representatives of Iberia in Madrid, even though AENA itself said, through a press release, that it is a problem that only concerns the company and its workers.
The protest was called on June 13, a time that the Strike Committee considers more than sufficient for public institutions and the parties involved to have worried about the disagreement and especially to look for some kind of solution. Last weekend the consequences worsened and the reactions from the political class have been numerous, however, the spokesperson for the employees believes that more than words, effective mediation is needed and not statements for the gallery. "We are going to continue demonstrating that we are right, supported by the resolutions of the Labor Inspection, and we are willing to sit down and negotiate now," Fajardo indicated.
Why only in Lanzarote?
The workers' spokesperson pointed out that until a month ago at Gran Canaria airport there were 213 workers who were transferred from Iberia to Binter Canarias and in Tenerife 191, but, Fajardo stressed, "curiously there was some kind of negotiation and of the 213 planned in Gran Canaria, 22 are leaving and of the 191 in Tenerife, only 15 are moving to Binter." He reiterated that in the capital islands there was political pressure to avoid a similar strike in their airports, while in Lanzarote "we do not have the capacity to avoid this type of conflict." The unionist wonders what would have happened in Las Palmas if 2,000 suitcases were left on the ground or if the passengers on a flight defied security measures and themselves unloaded the packages from the hold of an airplane.
On the Island, he maintained, the only measure of pressure from the workers is the strike and to maintain the protest for as long as necessary because the Committee is disappointed with the intervention of public administrations in this case.
Disagreements in CCOO
León Fajardo admitted that there are some internal disagreements in Comisiones Obreras over the strike, but made it clear that the continuity or not of the strike, as it was called by the Iberia Works Committee, will respond to the decision of the Strike Committee and not to that of Comisiones Obreras (CCOO). For the union leader, who belongs to CCOO, it is Iberia who has to make "the gesture" and propose an offer to unblock the labor conflict.
For his part, the island secretary of Comisiones, Ramón Pérez Farray, made it clear that above all we must be respectful of the demands of any worker and, personally, expressed his full support for the strike of the employees because he is convinced that there are sufficient reasons for having made that decision.
Pérez, who has been actively involved in the union movement since 1972, understands the position of some of his colleagues who have not agreed with the strategy used to claim rights, but clarified that it is not the first time that it has happened and knows perfectly well that within a union there may be conflicting opinions without reaching a rupture.
The secretary of Comisiones, like the spokesperson for the Strike Committee, expressed that it is the Committee that has the capacity to call or call off the strike, as well as negotiate or make any decision regarding the labor conflict that plagues the interests of the Island. Finally, Pérez Farray advocated for a prompt solution and urged AENA and Iberia to "wake up" to summon the Strike Committee to dialogue.
