Pamplona (EFE).- The passenger transport unions, a sector that in Navarra employs some 2,000 people, have seconded a strike on Wednesday. Despite its low incidence due to the minimum services of 100% in school transport, it has been “a warning” and “a wake-up call” about future mobilizations demanding the negotiation of their collective agreement.
Manuel Gómez, from the UGT, said it in statements to Efe that together with the CCOO, ELA and LAB they called for the three-hour strike today, between 7:00 and 10:00, coinciding with the bulk of school transport. This has not accused incidences for having minimum services of one hundred percent, while in discretionary transport there has been no affectation and yes in the regular one, although with minimum services that have lessened it.
In any case, Gómez has explained that it was a first notice “to force the employer to make some movement in the negotiation of the agreement, currently non-existent despite the negotiation that began in 2021. It was a year after the retroactivity lost effect of three years started at the end of the agreement signed for 2011-2017.
In this regard, it has recognized that the strike had not been raised with the intention of causing excessive incidents, because if they had wanted it that way it would have been raised in another time slot and on another day, such as weekends, in which the condition to the regular transport would have been evident, something that could be considered for the month of May, has advanced.
The strike, for a better working day and more salary
He recalled that the main obstacles to negotiating the agreement are the working day (they ask that the times between one service and another be counted as working hours) and the salary increase of salaries that have not been updated for six years.
In any case, Gómez has insisted on requesting the involvement of the Government of Navarra in the “unblocking” with the employers. Thus, “60 or 70% of the work carried out by transport companies are concessions from the Administration”, mainly school transport for public schools, a public award.
As are the regular lines and other minor concessions, such as the transfer of the Sports Games on Saturdays. This was stated yesterday by the unions to representatives of the Government with whom they met to transfer this request for involvement.
The Government defends minimum services for the constitutional right to education
For its part, the Government of Navarra has defended the “basic, essential and constitutional right” that education entails and that therefore justifies the minimum services of 100% in school transport set for the strike called by the unions this Wednesday .
The Minister of Education, Carlos Gimeno, said this at the press conference after the weekly government session. Asked about the three-hour strike this morning in transport, although he had no data, his null condition in school transport has advanced, where minimum services of 100% had been set, as was done in two previous strikes. It was in 2019 and in 2020.
“Obviously we are talking about a basic, essential and constitutional right, which is the right to education, included in the Constitution, which the department must preserve. And therefore those have been the minimum services ”, he has justified.
Gimeno has pointed out that yesterday, in a meeting with the unions calling the strikes, this extreme was transferred to them, “without prejudice to the fact that they protect themselves in their rights and can appeal this Foral Order. But that must already be determined by a judge or judge ”, he has conceded.