Las Palmas De Gran Canaria, Feb 23 (EFE) that removing it or modifying the sanctioning regime, as the employers claim, is giving employers a “free pass” to infringe labor rights.
This is how representatives of the transport sector of these three unions have expressed themselves in a press conference, who have pointed out that, until now, the Canary Islands Government “has given everything it asked for” to the employers of this sector, such as the tax bonus of 99% to the fuel tax, so they “do not understand” what more businessmen could want, whom they accuse of asking for claims “without common sense” and outside the regional competition.
“The employers suggest that it is not necessary to measure driving times because the distances are short. What problem do they have? That they are paying many penalties for requiring drivers to fail to comply with these driving and rest times ”, has referred to the general secretary of the Federation of Services to the Citizenship of CCOO in the Canary Islands, Pedro Costeras.
He has also requested that the institutions and authorities carry out their inspection and sanction work and not accept the employer’s request to make the sanction systems more flexible for non-compliant employers.
The unions have also accused the transport employers of making “false” speeches, such as that the tachograph is originally intended for long journeys, when the reality is that most of those made on the mainland are “proximity journeys” in the same city or province.
They have also denounced that they are trying to stop Canarian workers from being “clumsy” by accusing them of not knowing how to use the tachograph and blaming the volume of sanctions on that.
“That is false, Canarian drivers know perfectly well how it works. The problem is that, unfairly, they are being asked to break driving and rest times”, stressed the union representatives, who recalled that, precisely, half of the sanctions are related to non-compliance with those times, and not with the forgetfulness of the workers.
They have also described as false that the use of the tachograph should be exempted on islands of less than 2,300 square kilometers, since the European regulation simply stipulates it as an option that can be applied, as long as it contributes to improving labor relations, security road or competition, precepts that, in the opinion of the unions, are not fulfilled in the Canary Islands.
“In the Canary Islands, you compete at the cost of not wanting to pay or that the worker works extra hours,” stressed Costeras, who has asked the Canary Islands government to, in turn, convey to the Spanish government the need to repeal the decree that regulates the rest time between shifts for drivers from the Canary Islands which, as they have denounced, is less than that of other workers in Europe, with 8 hours of rest compared to 11 for other workers.
According to Costeras, breaches regarding driving and rest times are “generalized” and making the system more flexible would only worsen working conditions and road safety.
Finally, they have denounced that while the employers organize work stoppages and claim issues that are difficult to comply with, they continue to keep “collective bargaining blocked.”
“In Tenerife there is no collective agreement and in the province of Las Palmas the agreement for the transport of goods and the one for discretionary passenger transport are blocked. The salaries in discretionary transport are from 2011 and in merchandise from 2007”, have lamented the union organizations.
This clashes, they have deepened, with the claim of the CPI items of the last ten years to the Government of the Canary Islands in contracts such as school transport, which does not affect the wages and rights of workers. EFE