The spokesperson for the National Platform for the Defense of Road Transport, Manuel Hernandezhas called for a new meeting with Minister Raquel Sánchez to that “unlocks” the problem of contracts below costs, for which small carriers have been on strike for fourteen days.
Hernández wants to transfer to the head of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda that they would call off the mobilizations with a royal decree that guarantees them work under a minimum profitability, on a transitory basis until the Law of the Land Transport of Goods Contract can be modifiedas explained in an interview on the channel 24 hours of TVE.
The spokesman for the platform assures that the “dominant position” that the shipper has over them leads them to have to work at a loss, for which he calls on the Government to “legislate so that these bad practices do not occur that lead the base sector to ruin”.
“They have to articulate a mandatory measure where no contract can be made below the operating cost,” he stressed, after recalling that there is a Cost Observatory that stipulates how much a kilometer costs.
After fourteen days of strikes and marchesHernández has insisted that small transporters “cost more money to work than to be unemployed” and that they do not want “subsidies or aid”and has called on his people to “continue driving trucks to make the problem visible”, in a Facebook message.
Although the runaway rise in fuel prices has aggravated their situation, the platform’s spokesman emphasizes that they have been like this for several months and that last October they already raised this problem with the ministry.
In his opinion, transport in Spain “is well paid” and consumers pay for the product properly in terms of transport, but large logistics companies and companies that sell cargo without trucks “keep up to 50 percent of the price of transport, And that has to be eradicated.”
“We ask you to please take into account the seriousness of the situation and that we have no choice but to remain unemployed if the main measure is not heeded,” he claimed to the Government.
In a statement, the Board of Directors of the platform has verified the “impossibility of starting without first having signed agreements that are immediately put into force”, after assuring that cHe has “all the support and firmness” of his associates in all the provinces.
Along these lines, the assembly of the Hiru Basque carriers’ union, meeting this Sunday in Alsasua (Navarra), has agreed “by a large majority” to continue the strike and continue mobilizing, as the Association of Discretionary Merchandise Transport Employers also did yesterday by Carretera de Santander and Cantabria (Asemtrasán) and the Discretional Freight Transport Business Association of Aragón (Tradime).
Meanwhile, in Galicia, the BNG deputy in Congress Néstor Rego has met with carriers in the Coruña municipality of Narón and has expressed his support for the claims they have been making in recent days.
To the millionaire losses already recorded by various industries due to the strike of small carriers The Andalusian citrus sector has joined this Sundaywhich has seen its sales paralyzed due to the shortage of trucks after a harvest that was already slowed down after two weeks of rain and humidity.