Sometimes, writing knowing that most potential readers may criticize you harshly for not sharing your opinion on a certain topic makes you wonder if it's worth going through such a bitter experience, simply ...
Sometimes, writing knowing that most potential readers may criticize you harshly for not sharing your opinion on a certain topic makes you wonder if it's worth going through such a bitter experience, simply for trying to share ideas, even if they are unpopular.
Strikes at an airport seem to be demonized, especially after the controllers' walkout. The first thing to clarify is that not all airport workers are controllers, and they certainly don't earn 200,000 euros per month.
The labor force at an airport is in the same precarious conditions as in the rest of the sectors, and this is the fault of, on one hand, the government, which with its laws attacks the quality of employment, the precarious contracts, permissiveness in dismissals, and the lack of labor inspection. And on the other hand, a significant part of the business class, which only looks at its own interest, without stopping to think that a part of its wealth is being generated by its employees, whom it treats as if they were simple day laborers, whom it can use until squeezing them and then discard for others, from whom to continue extracting the juice.
But of course, in times of crisis, it seems that the only important thing is that the worker does not complain! What an offense to those who are unemployed! And the employer, meanwhile, exploiting, with the story that there are more workers in the street willing to do what he does not accept.
There can be no greater contradiction than seeing workers fighting among themselves for a job, accepting any whim that the employer fancies.
In the matter of AENA workers, they only ask that their working conditions be maintained once it passes into the hands of private companies; another fundamental issue and of vital importance for an archipelagic space like ours: the opposition to the privatization of airports.
The tourist associations of Lanzarote have strongly opposed the advance notice of the AENA workers' strike, because, according to their criteria, it threatens the economic growth of the island and the creation of jobs, accusing them of being privileged.
Everything would be fine if these associations and fundamentally, some of their members, had stood out for the defense of the interests of the island and its workers.
It is shocking to have to hear how tourist entrepreneurs accuse certain workers of being privileged, when these same entrepreneurs have been "privileged" when receiving European subsidies of dubious legality, when they have obtained a "privilege" treatment by local and regional authorities to do what they have wanted. Today, many of these "privileged" works have court rulings against them for having crossed the limits of the law.
In Lanzarote, we see how tourism increases constantly. On the other hand, unemployment does not decrease, and any worker knows that at this moment, wherever they are working, it is necessary to increase the staff to be able to carry out the work in a dignified manner, both for the worker and for the client.
And that is what even the President of the Government of the Canary Islands is ending up recognizing, when he complains that employers are not making the necessary hires to provide a decent service to tourists, who are arriving in the Canary Islands in significant numbers, and that many of these visitors are complaining alarmingly to their tour operators about the low quality of service.
Workers, whether from AENA or any other company, have a constitutional right, not a privilege, recognized to defend decent working conditions: the right to strike.
