Why the metal strike in Cádiz has lasted ten days and could be even longer

• Conflict The metal sector begins the second week of strike far from the agreement with the employer

• Cádiz 'Kichi' harangues the metal protesters in a day of new barricades in Cádiz

Cádiz has a long history of tough strikes, especially in the metal industry. But the one that started now ten days ago is on its way to breaking records and becoming one of the longest, one of the most tense and, also, one of the most violent. Because far from being consumed, with the passage of time the flame of

seems to be fed with a spirit that, the unions say, are "warm" in the face of a negotiation that is stagnant and in which, after successive and marathon meetings, the positions are found and disagreement entrenched.

The last

, held today in Cádiz, has once again demonstrated the remarkable support not only of the workers of the sector themselves - some 20,000 throughout the province of Cádiz - but also of a not inconsiderable part of Cadiz society. More than a thousand people, many of them young students, have taken to the streets to support the strike, a spigot through which social discontent is emerging due to the successive crises that had been handcuffed by the pandemic.

With all this pressure, the table of the Andalusian Labor Relations Council (CARL) in Seville will be seated again this Wednesday by the

eleven for the UGT, ten for the CCOO, three for Femca and four for the CARL - who since the week In the past they try to find a way out of the conflict, for the moment without success. Between those on both sides there is now a

that separates them and that distances the agreement: on the one hand the revision of the CPI and its consolidation in the salary tables and, on the other, the duration of the new agreement that has to be signed .

These are the great obstacles facing the negotiation in which the Employment Department of the Junta de Andalucía is mediating and this is evident in the

of the last meeting of the negotiators, the one that took place yesterday and that It lasted from 6:00 p.m. to 12:15 a.m. today.

The minutes of the negotiation

According to these minutes, to which EL MUNDO has had access, the unions and the metal employers' association do not agree, basically, on whether the new agreement will last two, three or four years and on whether the difference between the increase that is agreed each year and

will be compensated at once or will be consolidated in the payroll.

That's where conversations have run aground time and time again. Because the unions want an agreement, at most, two years, a 2.5% annual increase and that 80% of the difference with the real CPI is included in the

. Meanwhile, the employer's association, the Federation of Metal Entrepreneurs of the Province of Cádiz (Femca), does not contemplate an agreement of less than three years and only if it lasts four years does it agree to consolidate part of the difference with the real CPI in the salary tables .

The employers, justifies Diego Sánchez, president of Femca, want a

to ensure that another strike does not

break

out in six months or a year, when they have to negotiate again.

Likewise, they wield the "bad" situation the sector is going through after a pandemic that has greatly harmed it to deny the union's claims regarding the revision of the IPC.

As regards only the

, he explains, of the three shipyards in Cádiz, only in San Fernando there is currently a workload insured and for a short time.

The one in Puerto Real does not have a job and the third, repairs, depends on "day to day" work.

If they accepted what the workers ask for, says Sánchez, an average company with between 120 and 140 workers would have to assume an extra cost of up to

per year and pass it on, in turn, on their prices by 10%. The result, according to the president of Femca, would be similar to suicide for a good part of the metallurgical industrial fabric. "If we give in, the option we have left is to close," he insists.

But that "bad" situation is not so much in the eyes of the unions, who deny the greatest and assure that the recovery is being noticed in the sector, with a greater workload in the industries. After years of crisis in which "responsibility and sacrifices have been asked of us" and in which the

has been gaining ground until reaching 20% ​​of the workforce of some companies, says Manuel Triano, from CCOO, the workers are jaded , angry and willing to fight for a labor agreement that improves their situation.

Moreover, Jose Manuel Rodriguez, UGT, predicts that if the conflict drags on

, the

physical, emotional and economic (600 euros on average per worker) will result in "more despair" and that "can radicalize positions".

However, Rodríguez, who will sit at the Sercla table tomorrow, is one of those who see the glass half full and see

that the distances that now separate the two parties will be shortened.

"At least now we speak the same language," he says while stressing that the abolition of one of the extraordinary payments is no longer on the table, as it was at the beginning, and "there has been progress" in improving wages.

The employers warn that time is short and that the bill for this strike - which the companies will take to compensate, says the president of Femca - must be added the risk that the large companies in the sector, the so-called tractors, begin to

with the auxiliaries precisely because of the strike.

In most contracts a clause is included that allows them to do so from the tenth day of labor dispute.

"It would be a catastrophe," he warns.

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Know more

• Andalusia

• Cadiz

• UGT

• CCOO

• Seville

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