Spain -Massive general strike on 29 March -March 30, 2012

The general strike called by the country’s main trade union confederations UGT and CCOO for the 29th of March has affected the country’s road, rail and air transport. Unions announce large numbers of factory workers joined the strike and a number of regional television stations went off-air. Production in the car and metal industries has stalled. Unions indicate the size of the protest pointing at a 20% fall in electricity demand nationally by 8 o’clock in the morning. Employer’s organisation CEOE states that participation is unequally spread through the country and focused on big enterprises. The unions protest against an announced labour law reform which amongst others reduces severance pay, allows company-level collective agreements to undercut branch-level agreements and gives employers more scope to impose changes unilaterally, as reported in the February edition of this newsletter.

English:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17545174 ;
http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/03/29/inenglish/1333009639_471744.html

Spanish:http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2012/03/28/actualidad/1332958776 … 

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. All rights reserved. The ETUI is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter, please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2012. To unsubscribe, please contact Mariya Nikolova.