Carriers have started this Monday an indefinite strike, to which they have been summoned by the Platform for the Defense of the National and International Road Freight Transport Sector, which claims to represent the medium and small companies which account for 85% of the sector.
The platform, without representation in the sector’s dialogue body with the administration – the National Committee for Road Transport (CNTC) – justifies the call for the “very serious” situation in the sector and “inadmissible” working conditionsto which is added the rise in fuel prices, accentuated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The entity has sent a long list of claims to the Ministries of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Labor and Social Economysuch as the prohibition of contracting transport services below operating costs and the prohibition of loading and unloading by drivers and freelancers who drive their vehicles, effective immediately.
Employers of the sector such as CETM, Fenadismer or Astic, with representation in the national committee, which agreed with Transportes last December on a series of measures to improve the sector, embodied in a royal decree-law approved on March 1have demanded that the Government act to alleviate the uncontrolled rise of fuel price.
However, they consider that this is not the time to support a transport strike, and even less so if it is called indefinitely and without clear objectives of any kind, because it will only serve to further destabilize the complicated situation the sector is going throughin accordance with the CETM.
The CNTC waits meet in the coming days with the Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Rachel Sanchez, which has announced that it will assess the possible prioritization of some of the measures of the aforementioned royal decree-law, such as the establishment of a compulsory review of the transport price when the cost of fuel changes.
Given the gravity of the moment, the CETM is committed to working for the full development of the agreements of the royal decree-law (which has launched other important measures such as precisely the prohibition of loading and unloading by drivers or the fight against unfair competition, among others), which he considers the only and also the best option for the sector to get out of “this damned quagmire” as soon as possible.
However, the platform that convened the mobilizations maintains that, once the agreements have been analyzed, “we continue to be in the same problem from the grassroots sector” and that the administration “continues negotiating with the shippers (who are the members of the CNTC), instead of responding to the calls for help from the real protagonists of the sector, who are the ordinary truckers.”
In his opinion, the agreements reached with the committee do not respond to the contracting reality of small carriers, since their application is not valid on the conditions that are mostly imposed by their shippers.
It is a measure that “benefits large transport operators which are the ones that maintain long-term contracts directly with the production centers”, they explain.
Given the messages on social networks announcing possible shortages due to the effect of unemployment, employers and the Government call for calm because they defend that they will not occur.
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However, CETM has claimed the collaboration of the State Security Corps and Forces in case their intervention is necessary to guarantee the right to freely carry out the activity.
Sources from the Ministry of the Interior assure that the security forces will put the operation necessary to guarantee normality on the roads.