MADRID, Jul 15 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Some 2,000 Nissan workers, according to estimates by the Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), marched this Wednesday from the roundabout of Carlos V of Madrid to the Congress of Deputies to ask for “political involvement” for the industrial future of the plants that the firm Japanese automobile company intends to close in Catalonia later this year.
Shouting ‘Nissan does not close’ and ‘Future for Nissan now’ and led by a banner that said ‘Nissan is enough of lies. We demand a real future ‘, the employees of the Japanese company have asked the Government and the different parliamentary groups for their involvement in guaranteeing the direct jobs of more than 2,500 people and about 25,000 people indirectly.
UGT general secretary Pepe Álvarez, who has participated in the demonstration, has demanded that Nissan withdraw the ERE and negotiate another exit. “The solution is not closing. The process must be postponed to continue negotiating, for Nissan to think better of it and to find other solutions,” he said.
Thus, he has demanded that the company “stop the clock” and enter into a negotiation process “for real, without blackmail and trying to find solutions.” “At the moment they have not convinced us, because there are no objective reasons for the Nissan factory to disappear from the Free Zone,” they criticized.
“The land where Nissan is in the Free Trade Zone is the most appetizing industrial land in Catalonia. Any solution is not worth it. We want a product to come that is compatible with the workers who are going to lose their jobs, that is industrial and that generates employment enough “, Álvarez has claimed.
For him, the closure of Nissan is a consequence of the 2012 labor reform, so he believes that it should be repealed “and end these business practices.”
Likewise, it has asked the Government and the Generalitat to work to save the automotive sector, since it is not a new issue. “We cannot be waiting for the days to pass, because if not, we will have a more dramatic solution than to demand now the company to withdraw the ERE,” he sentenced.
On his side, the secretary general of Workers Commissions (CC.OO.), Unai Sordo, has asked the Government and the multinational to invest in the factory.
“LABOR PARADISE”
“Our country cannot be allowed to become a kind of labor paradise for multinationals who, when they decide to leave, sometimes after receiving many public resources, leave Spain because there is no control system,” said Sordo.
For this reason, it has asked for an industrial plan and investments that allow jobs in the Barcelona Free Zone to be maintained and that protect the automobile sector.
In addition, he has requested the repeal of the aspects of the labor reform that have made it possible, in his opinion, for a multinational “to leave practically without any condition on the part of the Government or the labor authorities.”
For his part, the secretary of Trade Union Action of the Federation of Industry of USE, Raúl Montoya, has remarked that “the first urgent measure”, as they already requested in writing to the Ministry of Labor, is to repeal article 51 of the Statute of Workers. “This would allow the Labor Authority to regain the powers for the administrative processing of collective dismissals in cases as unjustified as the one that Nissan has raised,” he claimed.
NISSAN “LIES”
In this sense, Montoya, who also participated on Tuesday in the mediation meeting convened by the Minister of Labor, Social Affairs and Families of the Generalitat, Chakir el Homrani, has assured that in this meeting “it was demonstrated that Nissan lies in the causes that alleges and intends an illegal ERE. “
“The company presents in its report an ERE for organizational and productive reasons and, nevertheless, in the meetings it explains some unspoken economic causes. To this is added that the beginning of the period of consultations that they intend to consider as good began before it ended the process in the European committee, another irregularity “, Montoya has criticized.
For this reason, the USO has asked that in order to negotiate, it is first necessary for the ERE to withdraw, since, in their opinion, it conditions the talks. The protesters, who arrived by bus and car from Barcelona, will meet with parliamentary groups to achieve their goals.
The general secretary of USO, Joaquín Pérez, has been in the same line. “The lack of industrial policy for so many legislatures has led to conflicts like this. There is an urgent need to resolve Nissan’s, but within the framework of global industrial measures,” he stressed.