Striking works - spanish dirt collectors win.

[BelgianMadCow]

As a followup to this earlier post, from El Pais:

Street cleaners in Madrid on Sunday voted to accept an agreement reached before dawn between their unions and the city’s private contractors to head off a reduction of their workforce and end a nearly two-week-long strike that resulted in filth and garbage piled up throughout the capital.

Following a meeting that lasted more 15 hours, the three companies FCC, OHL and Sacyr withdrew their initial plans to lay off 1,134 of the total 6,000 workers – a figure that eventually dropped to less than 300 during the negotiations.

Instead, the unions involved in the talks – the UGT, CCOO, CGT, USO and CSIF – agreed to allow temporary furloughs of 45 days per year for the next four years for each employee. During those periods, street cleaners will be allowed to collect unemployment benefits before they return to their jobs.

I think the history of the hard-won victories by organised labor should be mandatory in history classes. Even here in "socialist" Belgium, striking is demonized. We seem to have forgotten the battles of the past.

[KG]

1. solidarnosc !

[Laelth]

2. k&r for labor. n/t

-Laelth