It's A Beautiful Day For A.....Huelga?

Today was a beautiful day in Toledo. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and it was sunny without being too hot. Perfect for sitting at a café and sipping on a tinto de verano during siesta break. Unfortunately, there was no sitting and sipping today, because almost every café in Toledo was closed. And the fish market. And the fruit stand where I've been buying naranjas rather frequently these days. And almost every other establishment in Toledo......and the rest of Spain as well. Today, 29 September 2010, was the Huelga General, a job strike throughout all of Spain.

Empty Zocodover, usually filled to the brim with hundreds of tables and tourists.

Last night I had to spend the night in the Fundación because all the bus drivers were going on strike. We had no way to get to school from Polígono this morning... and God forbid we miss a class! My host mom offered to drive me herself, but then we found out that the entrances into the city were going to be blocked by picketers. So all the residents of the Polygon (that's English for Polígono for those who can't make that connection) flocked to the Fund to set up camp for the night.

Apparently this morning there was a lot of commotion in La Plaza de Zocodover (main plaza in town), but I was stuck in class so unfortunately I missed it. By the time I got out of class to go take pictures of the action (yes, ok, I brought my camera...sorry I'm a nerd), all the protesters had cleared out and everything was just empty. Not gonna lie...I was kinda hoping for some riots. I was a little disappointed. From what I hear, the protests in Toledo were pretty tame. But in other parts of Spain it got violent! Police brutality against college protesters in Barcelona and Sevilla was mentioned a number of times.

Here is my basic understanding of the strike. We talked about it a lot today in my Econ class but the professor talks really fast (and he has braces and therefore a more exaggerated lisp) so I might have missed a few key points. But I think I got the main gist. There are two workers' organizations in Spain fighting for labor reform in regards to 1. contratos temporales (temporary job contracts) and 2. indemnización (severance pay for fired employees).

1. Most employees in Spain are hired on temporary contracts (as opposed to contratos fijos, or fixed contracts, meaning they can be fired any time. There is no security in these jobs because employees know that eventually the contract will run out...they just don't know when. The CCOO (Workers' Commission) and the UGT (General Workers' Union) are fighting to extend the temporary contracts into more permanent positions.
2. Until fairly recently, if a fixed contract employee was fired from a job, he or she was given 45 days of compensation for every year worked up to the time of termination. For example, if someone was fired from, say, Vodafone, after working there for 10 years, they would be given 450 days of full compensation. That's more than a year's worth of salary! The law was recently changed to lower the number from 45 to 33 days of compensation for every year worked. Workers are furious, but employers still aren't satisfied. Businesses are pushing for another change to make it 20 days of compensation instead of 33, but this change isn't likely. Honestly, either way, I am indifferent to this law. As far as I know, severance pay is not compulsory in the United States, and the amount of severance pay certainly is not regulated by federal law. Isn't it normal to give 1 or 2 months' pay to an employee being terminated? Enough to live on until they find a new job? 33 days for every year worked seems very excessive to me. Maybe I'm just too young and naive to see the benefits to this system. I've never had a full-time job so I'm sure my perspective is very different from the Spanish employees who think they're getting ripped off.
   

Both of my business class professors have said that this strike "no sirve para nada." It's not going to do any good, and no change will come from it. The laws have already been altered, and the government is not going to change them again. It seems to have been a pointless effort--a small, after-the-fact, last-ditch, gung-ho, giveittheoldcollegetry kind of thing. But I certainly have learned a lot about Spain today. Spain seems to be a bit....slow...when it comes to politics and governmental advancements. Maybe to make a difference in the laws the strike should have been planned for before the elections or before the laws were changed. The strike really isn't going to make much of a difference now. The only two things the huelga accomplished today were these:

1. Let us have a sleepover in the Fundación.
2. Make the streets smell with all the trash that wasn't picked up by the striking garbage collectors.