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Check out what happens in Madrid when the local government tries harsh austerity
The dispute began on 5 November when the cleaners walked out over plans by the private contractors handling the city's waste collection to sack about one in five workers and slash the remaining employees' wages by 40%.
For a week Botella barely addressed the demands of the workers, but on Wednesday she declared that she had had enough, and warned the strikers that they had 48 hours to come to a deal, or she would bring in a public-sector company to carry out the limited services needed to keep the city's bins from overflowing.
It did not take long for her opponents to point out the irony of a rightwing mayor threatening to use public-sector workers to cover up for the mess made by the private contractors.
Furthermore, public employees soon made it clear they would not answer Botella's call.
For a week Botella barely addressed the demands of the workers, but on Wednesday she declared that she had had enough, and warned the strikers that they had 48 hours to come to a deal, or she would bring in a public-sector company to carry out the limited services needed to keep the city's bins from overflowing.
It did not take long for her opponents to point out the irony of a rightwing mayor threatening to use public-sector workers to cover up for the mess made by the private contractors.
Furthermore, public employees soon made it clear they would not answer Botella's call.
More at The Guardian. I thought it's a nice illustration of who really has the power.
17 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
and their criminalization of dissent is downright scary. The resistance the people are putting up is just awesome. They've been holding weekend marches in the hundreds of thousand on a monthly basis. The most interesting fact is that the mainstream media is nowhere on that protest. Hardly a word in belgian, german, dutch press that I read. If anything, a picture without background.
Madrid is also the scene of huge protests against attempts to privatize healthcare, called "the white sea" or Marea Blanca.
