Strike

So, if you're not aware of the general dismal economic state of things here in Spain, you should be. Read a newspaper, dang it. Let's just say this wonderful part of Europe - and many other wonderful parts of Europe - has seen better days. For lack of a better adjective, Spaniards are pissed about the situation and the government's "solutions."

Everything that's bad here is "por la crisis" (because of the crisis). Seriously, everything is attributed to the crisis. Today at school the water jug was empty, like it has been a lot lately, and one of the teachers noticed and grumbled about the damn crisis. But really, the crisis has had real effects on schools. The government can't afford to hire more teachers. Classes are larger. Teachers aren't getting bonuses. The public school I work at didn't have money to turn on the heating last week.

Like it or not, Spaniards are showing their dismay via strikes. In October, students in Extremadura went on strike to protest education cuts. Some students from my school participated; for some others, it was a nice excuse to not show up for school.

Flier for the student strike. It says they want to stop the People's Party's attacks on public education.

Today, there was a general strike across the country. Apparently in some areas it got pretty intense (read my fellow auxiliar Alia's post about fires and violence in northern Spain). Things were pretty calm in my area, from what I saw, but I read in the paper that trash services were more or less halted in several cities in Extremadura today, and most of the workers at the post office in one city were on strike. Thousands of people have reportedly participated in street demonstrations throughout Extremadura.

"Huelga" means strike. This poster was in the teachers' lounge at school.

From what I could tell, a lot of the teachers from my public school didn't participate in the strike. I talked to two of them at length (in Spanish even!) about why they weren't on strike. Two frequently used words during the conversation were "disillusionment" and "manipulation." They feel disillusionment regarding strikes' ineffectiveness and they feel manipulated by politically motivated labor unions. The unions are reporting a 45 percent participation rate among education workers, while the government is reporting 26 percent.

Anyway, here's a bit from the New York Times about the day:

MADRID — For the first time since the start of the euro crisis, labor unrest took on a European dimension on Wednesday as Spanish and Portuguese workers coordinated a general strike while unions in Greece and Italy also planned protests and work stoppages.

...

The Spanish strike was called by unions after (Mariano) Rajoy presented a tough austerity budget for next year but it also comes after the country’s jobless rate recently reached a record 25 percent.

...

While about 700 flights in and out of Spain were canceled Wednesday, Madrid and other airports were still functioning. The strike coincided with growing uncertainty about the future of Iberia, the national airline, after management announced this month that the airline needed to lay off a quarter of its workers to survive.

Ignacio Fernández Toxo, the head of one of Spain’s two main unions, Comisiones Obreras, said that the coordinated strike action across the Iberian Peninsula, as well as work stoppages in other parts of Europe, amounted to “a historic moment in the European Union movement.”

However, support for trade unions has dwindled in recent years because of their failure to prevent the surge in unemployment and controversy surrounding the unions’ reliance on government subsidies rather than contributions from members. In Spain, only about 16 percent of workers are unionized.

Un saludo,
Teresa