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The stevedores accuse Bilboestiba of seeking to prolong the conflict to force an arbitration that is beneficial to them

The company committee of the port of Bilbao stevedores today accused the companies grouped in Bilboestiba of “imposition“and of not seeking an agreement” but a conflict “, leading the workers to extend a strike that began on October 20.

The workers have criticized that the companies have rejected their proposal for mediation by the State Sectoral Joint Commission, and that instead they only propose a arbitration They estimate that it will be resolved in favor of the businessmen “regardless of the damage suffered by the Port itself and by everything that surrounds it”.

The workers proposed “not to exercise their right to strike” if the companies sat down to negotiate with the mediation, but Bilboestiba rejected the proposal. In addition to betting on mandatory arbitration, the businessmen affirmed that they will not sit down to negotiate with the committee if there is not a call for the strike.

The workers, who have summoned the media to read a statement without admitting questions later, have assured that the employers “with the invaluable collaboration of the Port Authority” have not sought “at any time a negotiated solution” to the conflict. and have urged companies to “carry out a Meeting schedule leading to beneficial agreements for all parties. ”

Bilboestiba denounced last week that the Port of Bilbao has lost 67% of general merchandise and 54% of containers during the dockers’ strike.

According to them, between October 9 and November 9 there were 43 fewer vessel calls, 21% less than the previous month. This has meant a 55% reduction in the tonnes of dry cargo handled at the docks, a situation which, they point out, “transcends the purely port dynamics and has a very negative impact on economic activity, as has been shown Lately numerous companies, associations and institutions “.

The conflict that faces workers and companies arises from the discrepancies when negotiating the next collective agreement and from what the unions denounce as breaches of the one currently in force. Behind that is the struggle of the four companies grouped in Biboestiba – Bergà ©, Toro y Betolaza, Bosco and SLP- so that the liberalization of the stevedoring sector is fulfilled and that these employees stop doing jobs that until now They had assumed, beyond the stowage itself, that companies now want to refer to eventuals, with less labor costs for them.

The representative centrals of the sector, Coordinadora, UGT, ELA, LAB and Kaia have presented a platform to the employers in which, among other issues, they want to comply with the breaks set in the agreement of four days of payroll for every 14 days of work . The company wants only three to be released, despite the fact that it was reported to the Labor Inspectorate.

They also require having a closed work schedule, so that workers know in advance the shift in which they must work, something that they now did not know until the day before, they say.

Both claims are based on the consideration that there is not enough staff to carry out the work. Currently there are 312 permanent and 103 temporary. Some temporary ones that belong to a job bank and are hired every day, and that the unions want to become permanent.

In addition, they want to continue doing the jobs that are not typical of the stevedores but that are included in the agreement, such as the tasks of receiving the goods delivery. As it no longer appears in the current law as the exclusive task of stevedores, companies want to outsource them or hire eventuals to carry them out. The unions believe that leaving them without those tasks opens the ban on further downsizing.

 

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