The workers of Urbaser, concessionaire of the solid waste collection service in Candelaria, will start a strike tomorrow due to the lack of negotiation of the collective agreement by the company, as announced by the works council, after denouncing Urbaser’s inability to negotiate, even with the mediation of the City Council. The announced strike days are the 28th, 29th and 30th of this month and the 1st, 2nd, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd and 23rd of May, 24 hours a day.
The circumstance arises that the Consistory has already drawn up a list of conditions to shortly launch a new tender for the service (21 million euros in seven years), which has expired since 2011, when it began ten years ago, when Candelaria was almost a third less than the population it has today, close to 30,000 inhabitants.
As explained by the works council, the reason that has led to this halt in activity is due to what they consider “passivity” on the part of the concessionaire to negotiate a collective agreement with salary tables updated to the current economic situation. In this sense, in the statement he states that the workers receive today what corresponds to the year 2019, “in some cases about 800 euros per month,” he says. In December 2022, the collective presented the complaint of the collective agreement and on March 6 gave notice of strike.
The works council clarifies that, in addition to the lack of negotiation of the agreement, the situation has been further aggravated by the non-awarding by the Candelaria City Council of a new garbage contract since 2011. It also complains about the resources with which that counts to carry out the work, since both the machinery and the number of personnel are “inadequate to provide the service that the neighbors deserve”, he indicates, from what he understands that the population has been affected by “a service of deficient cleaning and that is not up to a municipality like Candelaria”.
Precisely on the agenda of today’s municipal plenary session, the last of this term, is included “the price review of the public services management contract, under the modality of concession of the urban solid waste collection service in favor of the company Urbaser SA awarded by plenary agreement of December 29, 2000”.
