The unions calling for the Bizkaia Metal strike have described as “majority” and “absolute success“The second day of strike and mobilizations of five days started this past Monday. They have also estimated at 85% the” massive “follow-up of the strike among workers in the sector demanding a” decent agreement “, the updating of their wages , gender equality and the end of precariousness.

During this second day, representatives of ELA, CCOO, LAB and UGT, the four unions present at the negotiating table, together with members of ESK, CGT, USO and CNT, have carried out at noon, and in parallel, paths concentrations and subsequent demonstrations in Erandio and Amorebieta.

Erandio’s protest started minutes before 12 o’clock from the Metro station and ran for two kilometers to the headquarters of the Navacel company, in Astrabudua, and back to the Town Hall square along the Ría road.

Before the start of the march, the respective spokespersons for ELA, CCOO, LAB and UGT in Industry have valued the follow-up and response to the second day of the strike and have criticized the statements made this Monday by the Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu in which he stated that the Biscayan Federation of Metal Companies (FVEM) had done “everything possible” to try to reach agreements while it described the unions as being “predisposed” to hold the strike because it had been planned since spring.

Mikel Etxebarria, from IS IT OVER THERE, has indicated that the workers of the sector have once again demonstrated that they are “absolutely mobilized” and has reiterated the demand to the employer to “really demonstrate a real negotiating will because the points of the joint union platform are fair and feasible and we believe that the employer should give them an affirmative answer “.

Iker Gonzalo, from CCOO, for his part, has indicated that “industrial estates and companies in the sector in Bizkaia had once again been massively closed”, which means, from his point of view, that “people are fed up with this employer’s association and the attitude it maintains in the negotiating table “.

Iratxe Azkue, de LAB, in turn, has affirmed that this second day of strikes had been “successful” in a “clear response” of the workers to the “lies” of the employer and that, “above their lies, they have gone out and filled out the streets and factories emptied because these lies are not going to stop us. “

For his part, José María Rojo, from UGT, has indicated that Metal workers have once again demonstrated that “they are committed to updating their working conditions and with demands aimed at achieving job stability and a salary update after freezes since 2003 or 2011, for which they are using the weapons at their disposal to defend their rights. “

The four union spokesmen have criticized the statement made this Monday by the president regarding the conflict in the sector.

Patronal

The Biscayan Federation of Metal Companies (FVEM), for its part, denounced this Tuesday the action of “violent pickets” within the framework of the second day of the strike, especially in the Duranguesado region.

While the organizers have encrypted the follow-up of the strike at about 85%, the metallurgical employer has lowered this percentage to a 20 % and he has indicated that this figure is “highly conditioned by the presence of pickets.”

Sources of the FVEM have denounced that during the day of today there have been again “serious” incidents against certain companies “carried out by violent pickets”, especially in the Duranguesado area.

As they have indicated, the intention of these groups “is affect as many companies as possible, which is why they are concentrating on various points in the area, different from yesterday. “

VIDEO: The second day of the metal strike begins with barricades in Zamudio

Incidents

The Ertzaintza has identified 14 workers in different parts of the municipalities of Again, Zaldibar, Igorre and Zamudio in the first hours of the second of the five days of strike called in the Metal sector of Bizkaia.

The workers identified by the Ertzaintza have been five in Berriz, another five in Zaldibar, two more in Igorre and the remaining two in the vicinity of the Zamudio Technology Park.

Later, around ten in the morning, the Ertzaintza has identified another twenty people in Abadiño, where the action of the pickets has caused damage to the door and the furniture of a company located on Arzubia street in the town.

Demonstration of the metal sector in Bizkaia. Photo: @LABsindikatua

The unions recall that their main demands are to obtain a salary increase of the CPI plus 2 points in tables and of the CPI plus 1 in real wages, the right of subrogation, the eventuality control and the temporary employment agency and the adoption of “effective measures” in gender equality and occupational health.

EHBildu denounces Urkullu’s “cynicism”

The parliamentarian of EH Bildu Iker Casanova has denounced the “cynicism” of the lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, for being “next to those who generate precariousness”, in relation to the metal employer in Bizkaia, while advocating in his public interventions to generate quality employment.

In a statement, Casanova has criticized Urkullu for saying that there is no “will to agree” on the part of the metal unions of Bizkaia and has been sure that the employers have done everything possible to avoid the strike, and has criticized also the endorsement of these statements by the spokesman for the Basque Government, Josu Erkoreka.

The evaluations of both are, in his opinion, “indecent and shameful” because “once again they have sided with the employers, defending their interests, and against the workers.” For this reason, he has accused the Lehendakari of having become “the best spokesman for the employers” and of “skipping the basic principle of neutrality that the Government must respect with regard to collective bargaining.”