The union members who did not strike

By César Román The most fruitful period in terms of anecdotes of our parliamentarianism is undoubtedly found in the Courts of Cádiz and the years following the expulsion of the French from Spain, until the king decided to return...

October 1 2010 (15:49 WEST)
By César Román
The most fruitful period in terms of anecdotes of our parliamentarianism is undoubtedly found in the Courts of Cádiz and the years following the expulsion of the French from Spain, until the king decided to return...

The most fruitful period in terms of anecdotes of our parliamentarianism is undoubtedly found in the Courts of Cádiz and the years following the expulsion of the French from Spain, until the king decided to return to his absolutist privileges. One of the anecdotes of that hemicycle was the simile used by a liberal deputy to explain the lack of interest in harming the opponent.

He recounted that once a barber from the Pópulo neighborhood (a beautiful neighborhood in Cádiz) was going to extract a decayed molar from a countryman. When he was about to pull the molar, the countryman grabbed his testicles and asked him with great sarcasm: pisha, are we not going to hurt each other?

The same thing happened this past general strike, in which the convening unions did not want to hurt their socialist colleagues in the government too much, and vice versa. It seemed that the strike was more against Esperanza Aguirre than against Zapatero.

And as soon as the strike ended, he rushed to make it known that in the next General State Budgets, the unions will once again receive 20.6 million euros. Or, in other words, and so that everyone understands us, zero euros of reduction in budgets where all items were being reduced. All except those of the majority unions, of course.

Without a doubt, this has been the strangest strike of my life. And I must confess that I have experienced a few firsthand, and on both sides of the table. No matter how much some climb onto the pulpit and try to convince us otherwise, the strike has not been a success. Quite the opposite. But I will leave the war of follow-up figures that always prolongs any strike to those who have a better need for it than I do.

This strike has had a very special characteristic unlike the previous ones. This time, CC.OO and UGT have been alone for the first time in our democracy in the call. Alone, with the only exception that confirms the rule of some small anarchist unions that have been prodigal in stirring things up in one picket or another.

But for the first time, there have been dozens of professional groups that have passed their particular bill to the two majority unions, and this has reduced their important convening capacity. That particular union vendetta has taken away a large part of the strike's effectiveness, and the organization and union action secretaries of both unions could read why those disagreements occurred.

In healthcare, for example, the follow-up has been minimal, since both the Medical Union and the SATSE nurses' union not only did not support the strike, but also called for a strike against the strike. They denounced that the majority unions collaborated with the government and said nothing when Trinidad Jiménez cut their salaries and supplements.

Among civil servants, the same as in Healthcare because both CSI-CSIF and the majority of professional unions gave Toxo and Méndez a raspberry for having left them stranded in the face of the salary cut for civil servants.

The airports functioned normally because the only ones with the power to stop it are the Pilots' Union (SEPLA) and the air traffic controllers. And César Pérez de Cabo, the man most sought after by the women of Facebook to control their airspace, was that day in front of his screen and with his headphones on.

The same thing happened in the Madrid metro, which functioned almost normally because the machinists' union told the big ones to go fry gargles, something that their colleagues from RENFE also did, who were even able to get AVEs on the tracks.

The list is endless and I don't want to go on any longer without remembering that in some areas such as the Basque Country the impact was minimal, since the majority nationalist unions ELA and LAB did not want to go hand in hand with their "Spanish" union colleagues.

With that panorama spreading like an oil slick everywhere, with important unions such as USO or those in education looking the other way and with people calculating how much they were going to be deducted from their payroll for the strike, it is not surprising that the strike did not prosper.

Maybe it would be a good time for the highly subsidized majority unions to have a look at it, take their medication and

rectify the misguided course they have been on for a long time. Our society and our labor relations need strong and representative unions, and that is what the unions of the cruise ship passenger Toxo and the taster Méndez increasingly lack.

*César Román is the spokesperson for the Professional Association of Human Resources Directors.

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