It's not the right time for strikes

"Will the workers of Inalsa have the courage to gather together and demonstrate in the streets of Arrecife? I highly doubt it, as they would be an easy target for the wrath of the suffering and impoverished ...

September 9 2011 (17:39 WEST)

"Will the workers of Inalsa have the courage to gather together and demonstrate in the streets of Arrecife? I highly doubt it, as they would be an easy target for the wrath of the suffering and impoverished ...

"Will the workers of Inalsa have the courage to gather together and demonstrate in the streets of Arrecife? I highly doubt it, as they would be an easy target for the wrath of the suffering and impoverished residents of Lanzarote." This forum post received on lavozdelanzarote.com summarizes the feeling that many citizens of the island have had upon learning about the strike announced by the Inalsa Works Council. The fact is that if the working conditions of the public water company's employees have never generated much sympathy, in the current context they raise real blisters.

It is not about blaming the officials for Inalsa's bankruptcy, because it is evident that those responsible for the company dragging millions in losses, despite operating as a monopoly on the island, are the political leaders who have been in charge. But what is undeniable is that the privileges that the workers have been getting in recent decades are one of Inalsa's many leaks.

Therefore, it is difficult for citizens to understand this strike announcement. And even more so when half of Lanzarote has been suffering weekly water cuts for months, and the entire island is going to have to pay more for water bills, which have risen twice in just over three months. In that context, are the workers going on strike because they want them to work more? Because the bankruptcy administrators want the "half hour for a sandwich" to no longer count as working time? Because they have said that each employee works 270 hours less per year than stipulated in their agreement?

Interestingly, the same questions that many citizens ask themselves are also raised by some Inalsa workers, who have once again conveyed their discomfort with the Works Council to La Voz. The fact is that if they did not understand this Committee's support for the bankruptcy administrators before, now they do not understand what this radical change is due to, since they have gone from "silence" for almost two years to a frontal attack, calling the administrators "enlightened" and stating that "they have no idea how to organize a company of this level."

Therefore, the workers who have been critical of the bankruptcy administrators almost from the beginning, say that they do not understand the reasons for calling the strike now, and anticipate that the majority of the staff will not support it. The Works Council denies it, but the truth is that it is striking that a week after having approved the measure in an assembly (which, by the way, was not attended by even a quarter of the workers), they had not yet submitted the strike notice, nor had they explained the reasons for this unusual delay.

In any case, whether there are many or few, the truth is that there are Inalsa workers who do not understand this measure. And if they don't understand it, much less can the suffering users understand it. And even less so, in the situation in which Inalsa finds itself, and with the crisis that the whole country is experiencing.

The latter has sharpened the gap between civil servants and the rest of the mortals, who now see more clearly than ever the waste that has occurred for years in public administration. And although the workers are not responsible, they have benefited from it, with working conditions that would be unsustainable for any company, and that have evidently also ended up being so for the public administration.

In Lanzarote, the unemployment rate continues to exceed 25 percent. Almost everyone has a family member or someone close to them without a job and, those who work, have seen colleagues fired in recent years, have faced a reduction in their salary or have had to dedicate more hours or take on more work in their company. And in those circumstances, it is difficult for them to understand the demands of a group that has had its job almost shielded, that dedicates fewer hours than average and that, nevertheless, earns more than the majority.

It is not about "envy", which there may also be, but about the harshness of a crisis that, for the vast majority of workers (and the unemployed), would make it totally irrelevant whether or not they are discounted half an hour to eat their sandwich.

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