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Spain
Arie Pres - 21.06.2002 00:39
June, 20/02 - Many shops closed and hundreds of flights were canceled Thursday as workers staged Spain´s first general strike in eight years. The unions are protesting cuts in unemployment benefits. Their one-day nationwide protest aims to embarrass conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar as he prepares to host a European Union summit Friday in Seville. It poses the stiffest challenge to Aznar from unions since he took power in 1996.
Barcelona, 20/06/2002.
Madrid, 20/06/2002.
Sevilla, 20/06/2002.
Zaragoza, 20/06/2002.
Bilbao, 20/06/2002.
Barcelona Bank, 20/06/2002.
Vigo, 20/06/2002.
Murcia, 20/06/2002.
Barcelona, 20/06/2002.
The Workers Commissions, a labor federation, said that in at least three areas of Madrid police rushed demonstrators after skirmishes and heated verbal exchanges.
Dolores Moreno, a spokeswoman for Spain´s other main labor group, the General Workers Federation, said she saw police in riot gear attack members leaving the group´s Madrid regional office to head toward a picket line at a bus station. One striker was bleeding from the head, she said.
The labor federations said around midday that 84 percent of workers had taken part in the stoppage.
In the normally bustling shopping streets around the Puerta del Sol, Madrid´s equivalent of Times Square, many stores were shuttered. Many stores also closed in Barcelona, Spain´s second largest city.
Outside the Corte Ingles department store, riot police with black helmets and truncheons stood guard to fend off a crowd of whistle-blowing strikers.
Saturnino Benito, a 41-year-old butcher, took issue with Aznar´s plans to halt welfare payments to unemployed people who snub job offers three times.
"It is like calling Spanish workers lazy and scum," he said. "It´s just not right."
The government´s unemployment reform, passed by decree last week, would also eliminate salary payments to Spanish workers who have been fired and are appealing in court. It would also curtail payments to temporary farm workers. The Spanish jobless rate is about 13 percent.
Buses provided minimum services, as mandated by the government, and the Madrid metro system ran with about half its normal number of trains.
Two-thirds of the 1,000-plus arrivals and departures at Madrid´s Barajas airport were canceled.
Nationwide, the flagship carrier Iberia ran just 20 percent of its scheduled flights. Iberia says the strike is being respected in part by pilots, flight attendants and ground crew. The protest is unrelated to Wednesday´s strike by air traffic controllers in many European countries.
State-run Spanish TV scrapped its regular morning talk shows and ran 1960´s movies or cartoons.
Spain´s last general strike was in 1994, when Felipe Gonzalez, ´a Socialist´, was prime minister. It was called to protest his overall economic policy, blamed among other things for soaring unemployment. (AP)
 Website: http://www.DeWaarheid.nu
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| aanvullingen | | | 10000 | henk - 21.06.2002 01:14
ik hoorde een getal van 100.000?
Bron: mijn radio
| | ??? | Jannes - 21.06.2002 01:26
henk, 10000, 100000, waar heb je het over? in het artikel worden geeneens getallen genoemd. ja, 84 procent van de arbeiders die staken of zoiets.
| | wat si staken zonder bier? | flopperdepop - 21.06.2002 01:45
 http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=34274&group=webcast
Spain General Strike: Militant strikers shut down businesses
Yelah.net: The strikers of Spain are not happy with just stopping work. They also try to shut down workplaces where activity, despite the general strike, continues.
Shortly before 12 pm, the 19th of June, minutes before the general strike is about to commence, a group of union activists gather outside the offices of CGT in Sevilla. They prepare themselves with flags and fliers, and after the 12th hour is struck, they set out to picket the city. The idea is to through information and dialogue persuade those who still work to join the strike.
Among the activists a couple of Swedes are found, mostly syndicalists from the SAC. Hannele Peltonen, the general secretary of the SAC, is one of them.
- We are here with a delegation of eleven persons who will attend the yearly industry-meetings of the syndicalist unions, she says.
- We support the CGT in the general strike and will participate in the picket, but probably not stand in the frontline.
The group of forty people begins to wander from pub to bar, which are the only businesses that might be open this late. They enter the premises and hand out fliers or stand outside and shout slogans.
Many choose to close down, but some refuse to even let in the activists and continue their business as good as they can with a cheering and booing crowd outside the door.
Kate, an US citizen, who is sitting in an irish pub which the activists just succeeded in closing says that "there are worse things in the world than not being able to have another beer."
The pickets, who not only will be active in Sevilla, but in the whole country, will continue operations during the morning and noon the 20th, to shut down everything from factories to shops and bank offices.
Fredrik Nathorst Westfelt Transl. Mikael Altemark
Yelah.net is a swedish bi-weekly libertarian internet magazine with over 40 000 readers a month.
Website: http://uk.indymedia.org
| | Trouw van morgen: Alleen politiewagens rijden | 21.06.2002 02:51
* Alleen politiewagens rijden nog in Sevilla SEVILLA - Ze eten soep, kijken WK-voetbal en wachten op antwoord. Buiten hebben politie-agenten schaduwplekjes opgezocht om de zinderende hitte te weerstaan.
Ook zij wachten, want de vierhonderd bezetters van het universiteitsgebouw met geweld verwijderen, zou nu niet handig zijn. De bezetters zijn migranten die hun verblijfsstatus opeisen. En migratie is een van de hoofdonderwerpen op de top.
Website: http://www.trouw.nl/artikelactueel/1024548744020.html
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