Spanish workers strike over ‘pro-business’ labour reform

SPANISH workers took to the streets yesterday in a 24-hour general strike over labour reforms they see as pro-business.

Unions claimed massive participation in the day-long stoppage protesting at what they claim to be the latest dose of bitter medicine prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government has prescribed to appease European Union officials and jittery investors watching Spain’s debt grow and its GDP shrink.

As the protests heated up in major cities, scuffles broke out between police and strikers. Hooded activists hurled rocks at bank offices and store fronts and set fire to bins in Barcelona.

Riot police vans could be seen in many streets and squares in nearly every city as tens of thousands of union supporters were expected to take part in more demonstrations in the evening.

A total of 58 people were detained and nine were injured by last night according to officials.

The unions were demanding a “gesture” from the government to scale back the reforms, warning they could cause more unrest from the start of May.

The government quickly rejected the notion of a compromise, and downplayed the impact of the strike. “There is no stopping on the path to reform,” labour minister Fatima Banez said.

The government will today reveal even more austerity pain with a 2012 budget to feature tens of billions of euros in deficit-reduction measures.

The cuts are designed to help Spain lower its deficit to within EU limits and calm the international investors who determine the country’s borrowing costs in debt markets - and therefore have a lot of say in whether Spain will follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal in needing a bailout.

Unions are challenging a conservative government not yet 100 days old, protesting at changes to labour market rules long regarded as among Europe’s most rigid. The changes make it cheaper and easier for companies to lay people off and let them cut wages unilaterally.

On the Gran Via, one of Madrid’s main commercial strips, a group of about 500 whistle-blowing pickets marched slowly, blocking traffic for about an hour.

One protester, Angel Andrino, 31, said he was laid off a day after the labour reforms were approved last month.

The government argues that while the reforms might hurt now, they will create jobs in the future. Spain is, by official estimates, already back in recession.

Mr Andrino lives with his parents and brother, the latter the only one to be employed, with a part-time job.

“We are going through a really hard time, suffering,” he said. “The rights that our parents and grandparents fought for are being wiped away without the public being consulted.”

General Workers Union secretary-general Candido Mendez put average participation at midday at 77 per cent.

“This strike has been an unquestionable success,” he said.

Electricity consumption – a measure of industrial and commercial activity – was down by 17 per cent at midmorning, according to the interior ministry. That is slightly less than during the last general strike in 2010, which was deemed as only partially successful.

Investors are worried about prospects for continued, widespread social unrest of the kind seen in bailed-out Greece.

But Professor Jose Ramon Pin of IESE Business School said this will not happen in Spain because people reluctantly accept that the country needs a radical economic makeover. “This country is in no mood for taking to the streets,” Prof Pin said.