Spain Prepares for Strike Action
September 28th, 2010
Forced to impose unpopular measures to fix the economy, Spain’s Socialist government faces a general strike tomorrow amid union anger over what they see as a policy U-turn.
But many view the government’s tough labour reforms and belt-tightening measures as inevitable, and even necessary, and a low turnout is expected.
A poll published Friday in the newspaper Publico said only 18 per cent of workers backed the strike, and 71 per cent believed it would not force the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to change course.
“The aim of the strike is not to force him to resign, but to change his policies, to drop this new avatar, this reincarnation,” Candido Mendez, the head of the UGT union, said of Zapatero.
“The prime minister, in his heart of hearts, is aware that he must change,” said Ignacio Fernandez Toxo, the head of the other main union, CCOO.
Zapatero, who is still a member of the UGT, maintained a cosy relationship with the two unions after he first took office in 2004.
But that began to turn sour after he entered his second term in 2008, and the economy went into recession as the once-booming Spanish property sector declined along with the rest of the world. It emerged in the first quarter of this year with growth of 0.1 per cent.
The recession has sent the country’s unemployment rate to 20 per cent, the highest in the 16-nation euro zone. The rise in joblessness has in turn jacked up government spending on unemployment benefits, pushing Spain’s public deficit to 11.1 per cent of gross domestic product last year, the third-highest in the eurozone after Greece and Ireland.
The government on Friday approved a tough austerity budget for next year aimed at reassuring nervous markets over its ability to rein in the massive public deficit. “It is the most austere budget in recent years,” Finance Minister Elena Salgado told a news conference following a cabinet meeting. It envisages an overall cut in government expenditure of almost eight per cent compared to this year.
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