Summoned by the National Platform for the Defense of Road Transport, hundreds of trucks have participated this Saturday in a “Slow march” along the M-30 in Madrid, which has been defined by Manuel Hernández, president of this entity, as a “last push” to the indefinite strike that truck drivers have maintained for thirteen days.
The Government has promised in the last few hours to present a bill that gives security to carriers who work with a minimum profitability, but the representative of the lorry drivers has once again rejected what he considers “long-term promises” and has assured that it will call off the strike when there is a decree that, provisionally, prevents contracting below costs while the new regulation is approved.
work at a loss
“We cannot wait two or three months. We need a measure before starting work that guarantees that this is going to be the case now,” Hernández claimed in a Facebook message. The Third Vice President and Minister for the Ecological Transition, Theresa Rivera, has responded to this notice by acknowledging that “no one can work at a loss” and he recalled that the Government has already included this request in the agreement it has signed with the National Committee for Road Transport.
In an interview on TVE, Ribera defended that agreement and the need to be “scrupulous” in institutional representation, to prevent “individually one from questioning the great agreements that can be reached with the most representative organizations in the sector”.
The minority National Platform for the Defense of Transport basically brings together small freelancers that carry out medium and long distance freight for other companies. Its main demands are aimed at avoiding an abuse of subcontracting and that a price lower than its costs be paid for its services.
Support of the parties
The greatest support for the strike of small carriers has come today from the spokesperson for Vox in Congress, Macarena Olona, which has encouraged them to maintain their demands and “not surrender to the streets.” For his part, the mayor of Madrid, Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, has urged the Executive of Pedro Sánchez to solve the problem “by the shortest, simplest and most direct way, which is to lower taxes”, while the parliamentary spokesman for Cs, Edmund Ball, has opined that the agreement reached with the employers of the sector is “totally insufficient”.
From Cádiz, the spokesman for the Federal Executive of the PSOE, Philip Sicily, He has maintained that this is “a good agreement that benefits the sector” and has asked the platform to be “sensitive” and “aware” of the “difficult moment” that is being experienced, with “a war at the gates of Europe”, according to the EFE agency.
In addition to the march through Madrid, which has passed to ‘horns’ and without incidentthe members of the platform have called for other demonstrations in various provinces.
The stoppages continue
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Meanwhile, the Santander and Cantabria Association of Discretionary Merchandise Transport Employers (Asemtrasán) has decided in an assembly continue with strikes and the cessation of activity in the region, considering “insufficient” the aid announced. The Discretionary Freight Transport Business Association of Aragon (Tradime) has also decided in an extraordinary general assembly, with a “very tight” result, continue with the stoppages started on the 14th in protest against the high price of fuel, waiting for “more details”.
The agreement between the Government and the employer includes a discount of 20 cents per liter in fuel until June 30, which is equivalent to an average saving of 700 euros per month per truck and represents aid for a total of €1.05 billion. Of that amount, 600 million will be used to grant a bonus of 15 cents per liter of fuel to professionals, to which will be added another 5 cents -at least- contributed by the oil companies and 450 million in direct aid to the sector of both freight and passenger transport.