I Pit the Spanish Air Traffic Controllers

The BBQ Pit
21

Actually, just commenting on this, the government has legal footing to do this, following a strict reading of the relevant laws.

The relevant constitutional article is article 116 (“1. Una Ley orgánica regulará los estados de alarma, de excepción y de sitio y las competencias y limitaciones correspondientes.” – “1. A special law will regulate the states of alarm, exception and siege, as well as their corresponding limitations and competences”).

Article 116 is governed by law 4/1981 (June 1st), which says, among other things:

"Artículo 4.

El Gobierno, en uso de las facultades que le otorga el artículo 116.2 de la Constitución podrá declarar el Estado de Alarma, en todo o parte del territorio nacional, cuando se produzca alguna de las siguientes alteraciones graves de la normalidad:

a. Catástrofes, calamidades o desgracias públicas, tales como terremotos, inundaciones, incendios urbanos y forestales o accidentes de gran magnitud.

b. Crisis sanitarias, tales como epidemias y situaciones de contaminación graves.

c. Paralización de servicios públicos esenciales para la comunidad, cuando no se garantice lo dispuesto en los artículos 28.2 y 37.2 de la Constitución, y concurra alguna de las demás circunstancias o situaciones contenidas en este artículo.

d. Situaciones de desabastecimiento de productos de primera necesidad."

That is (emphasis mine):

"Article 4.

The Government, using the powers given to it by article 116.2 of the Constitution, can declare the State of Alarm, in all or part of the country, when the any of the following serious disturbances to normality happen:

a. Catastrophes, calamities or public disasters like earthquakes, floods, urban and forest fires or extreme accidents.

b. Sanitary crisis like epidemics or serious contamination incidents.

c. Paralyzation of public services essential for the community, when the contents of articles 28.2 and 37.2 of the Constitution have not been followed, and whenever any of the other circumstances or situations mentioned in this article happen at the same time.

d. Situations where there is a lack or shortage of essential products."

The relevant point here is point c. The government published a note saying that they were declaring the state of alarm in base to this law, according to point c, and considering that points a. and d. were applicable.

They have done this after consulting with the constitutional judges, so I am sure that they have a legal justification behind this that will be more in-depth than whatever I might say here.

Point c is a given: Air trafic control is a public service which has become essential for a modern nation, and article 28.2 of the Constitution has not been followed (it is the one that grants a right to strike provided that you give proper warning and follow the forms). The tricky aspect would have been to show that any other of the situations in points a, b or d may apply.

I don’t know about point a. It seems like over-stretching, unless they were thinking of the weather situation at the time. Point d is on much more solid ground, if you either define “maintaining air traffic open” as an “essential product” in a modern society, or consider that air traffic is the only way to do essential things like making sure that (for instance) an organ for a transplant reaches its destination in time.

In any case, this decision was taken after first checking with the relevant constitutional judges, who I am sure know much more than me about what can or cannot be done, or what can be considered to be grounds to declare a state of alarm.

The point is that a State of Alarm can only be declared by agreement in the parliament, after a vote, and the current government has only a plurality, not a majority of seats in the parliament. They needed (and received) the support of the opposition for this. It would appear that the opposition agrees with the legal reasoning that the government had to provide in parliament for the State of Alarm to be declared. It appears that there was a perception (at least in parliament) that the situation was dire enough to merit this.

22

While I have no information on this current situation other than what I’ve just read here I will say this:

There is no situation in the world outside of a dictatorship where one person has the kind of power and responsibility you’re describing. The world is not that black and white.

23

Just because the Spanish government is using legislation to justify the state of alarm, its still a crock.

This is merely an embarassment, thats all there is to it.

If transport workers go on strike in any other democracy, we would not be so ramshackle as to declare a ‘state of alarm’ - this is used for real emergencies, such as populations under direct threat of serious harm, they are simply trying to break a strike that they have done much to cause in the first place.Despite what you may believe, the nation will not fall, it is inconvenient, but it is not a life threatening event, there is no real risk of serious civil disorder.

Even if not an aircraft moves in the sky, it is still not an essentail public service in the way that perhaps water and sewage supply might be essential.

Spain has some way to go in its journey to democracy - using military assets is one thing, but temporarily conscripting people, in what is clearly not a state of emergency, is quite another. I would have no problem with the Spanish using military staff with expertise in ATC though there probably is not the capacity to run everything fully, it would be enough to move stranded people at airports.

Point is, the government is simply blackmailing these workers, they change their terms and conditions, and when they object by withdrawal of labour, they conscript them.

You should be asking why this would not happen in any other country in the developed world, imagine the USA sending in their military to compel service from civilian staff? Would not happen, don’t care how many laws and what part of the constitution you quote, it just wouldn’t.

24

Moonlitherial

You’ll notice my last bullet point in the post you quoted,

The root cause of all issues in any workplace is how it is handled by managers.

This is still true, because there are many ways to handle an issue, it starts right at recruiting staff, and moves on through industrial relations, which menas negotiating with employees, there may have to be compormises made, but ultimately it is about having your employees and the management working toward common goals - rubbish managers are incapable of grasping the concept of working with employees, and that’s what causes a huge number of needless problems. Its a partnership of employment, or it can be.

25

JoseB

You may not have the power to be able to negotiate such terms in your own contract, but in any case, the fact is that they had terms that were once part of the ATC workers contracts, and they have been removed, without agreement - you must realise that the reason they got these things is because they negotiated for them in the first place, and it is likely that they took a lower pay deal in order to get them.

I’ll tell you what is actually happening, the Spanish government is trying to cuts the operating costs of the organisation, by cutting the workers terms and conditions, its doing this to make it more attractive for privatisation - ut they are doing it without negotiating with their workforce first.

At some point, a company will buy it out, and pay the governement a large sum of money, which it will use to prop itself up from a financial crisis caused by other private companies.

The company who buys it will probably borrow the money, and the reduced costs will go some way to servicing the debt, and also the reduced costs will ield greater profit and allow better dividned payments to shareholders - meanwhile the workers will have been screwed out of their original contractual terms and conditions - they are, in effect, being screwed over to pay for their own privatisation,

…can’t you see why they might be pissed at that, they are being made to pay in cash for a crisis that they did not cause.

It is a classic media trick to show how much better off they are than other workers so that they do not gain much public sympathy - but don’t worry, cause one day it will be your turn - they will come for you and cut your pay and increase your hours.

You should not be jealous of the pay of other workers, you should be trying to catch them up, and if you can’t, then change the system so you can - that’s what trade unionism is all about.

The capitalists have no such qualms about crushing you if it suits them, and they will reward you if it suits them too - you just have to put yourself in the right place.

26

casdave is right; the capitalists have no qualms about perverting industrial relations and crushing the hopes of Labour which has been reduced to the peon status of a base salary of $267,000 a year. If the Spanish government really wants to use the tools of the plutocrats to intimidate the workers, it will whisper “Ronald Reagan” into their vulnerable shell-pink ears.

“(In) 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who ignored his order to return to work. The sweeping mass firing of federal employees slowed commercial air travel, but it did not cripple the system as the strikers had forecast.
Two days earlier, nearly 13,000 controllers walked out after talks with the Federal Aviation Administration collapsed. As a result, some 7,000 flights across the country were canceled on that day at the peak of the summer travel season.
Robert Poli, president of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, sought an across-the-board annual wage increase of $10,000 for the controllers, whose pay ranged from $20,462 to $49,229 per year. He also sought a reduction of their five-day, 40-hour workweek to a four-day, 32-hour workweek. The FAA made a $40 million counteroffer, far short of the $770 million package that the union sought.
Reagan branded the strike illegal. He threatened to fire any controller who failed to return to work within 48 hours. Federal judges levied fines of $1 million per day against the union…To the chagrin of the strikers, the FAA’s contingency plans worked. Some 3,000 supervisors joined 2,000 nonstriking controllers and 900 military controllers in manning airport towers. Before long, about 80 percent of flights were operating normally. Air freight remained virtually unaffected.
In carrying out his threat, Reagan also imposed a lifetime ban on rehiring the strikers. In October 1981, the Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified PATCO.”

Where’s the IWW when you need it?

27

I find it interesting that no one railing on the ATC workers are saying that a simple and easy and legal way of resolving the issue is to just give the ATC what they want. Americans and our bias shows through again in a topic about labor and management

28

One way or the other, this dispute will be resolved, employers can use force to cut terms, or they can negotiate.

If we are all happy to accept reduced terms and conditions, then why not allow employers to bring us all back down to Dickens days?

After all, its a free market - there is this envy among workers about what others are paid, why? Shouldn’t you be trying to emulate them - as long as it does not put you out of work - the risk that every worker takes when making pay demands is that they could price themselves out of the market or even damage the company.

However, using martial law to resolve disputes by conscripting workers does not seem to me to be a democratic way of doing things, if workers want to damage their own industry, then that the risk they take, and its not for governents to conscript labour, just how would that go down in the good ol US of A then??

29

When things are bad, most people seem to have this spiteful desire for things to be bad for everyone. Anti-union rhetoric plays on that.

30

This sounds amazingly like what we hear in the U.S. when disparities between the incomes of average Americans and the rich (i.e. CEOs) are brought up. “Don’t be envious of the wealthy, strive for what they have.” “A rising tide lifts all boats” etc. etc.

Maybe the key in dispelling all this pathologic jealousy is for everyone to be unionized. We already have super-rich athletes toiling away as trade union members - why not CEOs, hedge fund managers and the like? Once everybody is caught up in a universal round of demands, protests and strikes, no one will dare cross a picket line, everyone will get what they want, a new era of prosperity will dawn and class envy will be flushed down the dustbin of history, to mix metaphors a bit.

As Peter Townshend would say, that’s my solution. :slight_smile:

31

What do doctors make in Spain ?

32

This is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen anyone post here*.

I suspect you’d be talking out the other side of your mouth if you had just lost your job because you’re stuck on the Costa del Sol for two extra weeks.

*well, not really. But it’s pretty fucking stupid.

33

Tenerife KLM4805

34

Schiphol are on a roll lately. They lost my luggage two weeks ago. The luggage that just happened to contain my suit. For a wedding. After they reassured me repeatedly that my luggage would be transferred from my cancelled flight to the new one early the next day (the day of the wedding!)

A week later my girlfriend’s sister also flew through Schiphol on their way to Munich. Naturally, they arrived sans luggage.

35

Clearly, El Presidente Reaganez needs to fire them all.

36

The issue here is that folk seem to be complaining that their life is hard, so it justifies others having their pay cut arbitarily and without agreement - how would you feel about that if it happened to you?
Those CEO’s have frequently been presiding over regimes of reducing profits, worse and worse conditions to their own workforce, they are frequently responsible for the hard times that their workers must endure - thats if they have a job at all.

How would you feel when you express your discontent at such treatment to then be subjected to martial law?

People are not being killed, there is no civil disorder, there is a lot of inconvenience, some serious, but inconvenience does not seem to me to be adequate justification for conscription.

We had tube strikes recently, and that really put some folk in a pretty awkward spot, and the loss of that system is probably more fundamental to how London works than is the loss of Spanish air traffic is to the way Spain works, I don’t recall anyone advocating conscription to keep the tube running.

If our ATC workers went on strike, we would not use military law to compel them to work, we might well use military staff to do what they could to keep something in the air, but thats a very differant thing.

France is well known for the industrial actions of its ATC, and they do not feel the need to use conscription.

My view is that Spain is feeling that its national pride has been affronted, it simply cannot handle an industrial dispute that it did much to provoke so it uses petty nationalism to fill the void.

As for it being a free market, these workers have made their stand, and there may well be consequencies, its a risk that they run, they have to ask themselves if they have the muscle to get what they want - perhaps they have, perhaps they have not.

They have not caused a problem by doing their work badly, like the financial idiots around the world who are still busy rewarding themselves at your expense, the pay they have is not some tv rights cash and grab, they had contracts and terms that have been changed without their consent, they obviously did an effective job in acquiring those terms, but they are not keen just to let them go.

The reason behind these cuts is an impending privatisation, which was brought on by Spain bailing out the banks and needing cash - the fallout from the recession could blow the Euro apart, bit of a remote possibility but it grows, and these workers are expected to endure cuts to pay for a crisis not of their making, whilst those who did the making are still collecting their reduced bonuses because ‘we have to attract the best’ and we can’t risk them going elsewhere - let 'em go and screw up some other nations finances.

37

That’s a meaningless question to ask, you know the answer to that one.

But I’d like to believe that I would go on an honest (legal or illegal) strike, not calling in sick and by that undermining those rights for honest workers. I hope I wouldn’t do what the Spanish air traffic controllers have been doing.

38

When you have the right to strike taken from you, what is there left?

Well I suppose you could just suck it up and go to work, its an option, after all their remaining pay does not look too bad, but, once you have become accustomed to a certain income, thats the level you live at.

You also have to remember, they did cancel a strike at the pleadings of various parties not to disrupt the main August holidays - this was on the promise of meaningful talks, and guess what, those talks were not meaningful.

If this was a case of the company going under, so take a pay cut to preserve what you have, then thats one thing, but this is about the Spanish government trying to raise money becuase they propped up the banks which screwed up bigtime.

So now the Spanish government invokes a state of alarm to justify putting these workers under martial law - this after they called off a strike to show good faith.
I wonder just how many posters would deem this acceptable?

Why should they be expected to pay for a crisis not of their making?

Ultimately, they probably will not win, that’s how it goes these days, and I can understand the complaints of those passengers who are also not to blame for any of this.

The place to put the responsibility is not entirely at the feet of the Spanish ATC workers, as seems to be the view of a number of posters here, there’s plenty of blame go all round, only the passengers are completely without any of that.

39

They have the right to strike. They just don’t have the right to illegally strike. Your theory of industrial relations seems to be, “Give the unions whatever they want, and if there’s a strike, it’s management’s fault because they didn’t give the unions what they wanted.”

40

Not at all, a viable management stratgey might be to stare the unions down, not to kow-tow to the flexing of industrial muscle.

Managers need to understand when you give and when you take, sometimes it may be necessary to cuts wages, but its much better done through agreement.Unions will try to obtain what they can, managers have the balancing act of not doing so unless its necessary - for examply to maintain operations and to attract and retain the sort of staff they need and make a reasonable return in investment.

Too many managers seem to think industrail relations is about being macho, actually its rather better to have the wrokforce cooperating toward the comany objectives, I have seen workforces agree to pay cuts before now because they understood the situation - that is not likely to arise if managers set up barricades between themselves and the workforce, so everyone goes down in a sinking ship.

Thats not what is going on here, its about screwing the workforce over to pay for a crisis that is largely unconnected to their work.These cuts are being imposed despite contractual agreements.