A May Day kicks off focused on “no to war” and the right to housing, with the Andalusian elections as a backdrop. The major unions, CCOO and UGT, will hold more than a hundred demonstrations across Spain this Friday. This year’s protest will have as its main axes the demand to end the offensive in the Middle East, its economic consequences, the problem of access to housing, and the elections on May 17 in Andalusia.
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In fact, the central event of this International Workers’ Day moves to Málaga, where the confederal secretaries of CCOO and UGT, Unai Sordo and Pepe Álvarez, respectively, will be seen. The second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, who usually attends this demonstration, will also travel to the Andalusian city.
The unions will focus on the housing crisis, especially after Junts, PP, and Vox (with the abstention of the PNV) rejected this week in Congress the decree that included the extension of rents. Likewise, they will demand improvements in public services and denounce that there are autonomous communities governed by the PP that lower taxes while resources to sustain the welfare state “are scarce.”
The unions will focus on housing, after Junts, PP, and Vox rejected the decree that included the extension of rents
The CEOE will also have its share of prominence on this day of labor claims, as CCOO and UGT will demand that the employers sit down to negotiate the VI Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC), the state framework for negotiating collective agreements that contains recommendations for agreeing on new wage increases. The previous one expired last year, and the unions want the next one to include improvements in remuneration and working hours. “The CEOE must be put in front of the mirror,” warned CCOO and UGT,
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The demonstrations this Friday will also not lack slogans against the war in the Middle East, which the unions strongly rejected and for which they condemned the governments of Israel and the United States. In addition, they demanded that the central government and autonomous administrations adopt all necessary measures to mitigate the economic effects of the conflict, especially due to the rise in fuel costs. For both unions, when inflation soars, it is the “working class that suffers the most” from this impact.
In Catalonia, CCOO and UGT have chosen as the slogan for the protest “Against wars and fascism, more unionism.” In Barcelona, the demonstration will start as usual in Plaça Urquinaona at noon, at the intersection between Ronda Sant Pere and Pau Claris, will go down Via Laietana stopping at the Foment del Treball headquarters, and will end next to the historic Post Office building in the Catalan capital.
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