The Spanish Coal Miners Strike & Protests

[ckaihatsu]

Spain: Striking coal miners on the front line of austerity fight


Striking Spanish coal miners need our help today.


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This week, over 1,000 trade unionists representing 50 million workers in manufacturing and mining founded a new global union federation: IndustriALL.

IndustriALL's first online campaign -- hosted by LabourStart -- aims to pressure the Spanish government to negotiate with coal miners who have been on strike, and occupying their mines, for several weeks now.

Please take a moment to learn more and show your support for the miners:

http://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=1441

Thanks very much!



Eric Lee


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[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

The link didn't work for me.

[Sasha]

We have translated this letter from a retired Asturias miner, responding to comments about the struggle and talking about his experiences. He explains a lot of the background to the dispute.




I’ve worked for twenty five years in the mines. I first went down the mine when I was 18 and I would like to say that I am amazed by a lot of comments that I’m reading about mining and early retirement. I’m going to give you my perspective.

Firstly the struggle which the miners are carrying out at the moment isn’t to ask for money. It is that they respect the agreement that was signed last year between the Ministry of Industry and the miners’ unions, and which had subsidies designated until 2018. This money was from the European Community and not from the Spanish government. It isn’t money that came from any Spanish people to help us as many people who are criticising us so much seem to think.

Regarding this money what I, like almost all mining families ask myself is, where is the part of the money from the Mining Funds that was supposedly going to the creation of alternative industries in the coalfields, after the closure of the mines? Well, like in many other sectors, this money has been handled by the politicians and the unions. With part of this money, for example, Señor Gabino de Lorenzo, the ex-mayor of Olviedo, paid for new streetlights in his city, the new Palace of Expositions and Congresses and many other projects. Señora Felgeroso, the ex-mayor of Gijon, spent it on the Technical University and other projects.

In the Valle de Turon, in the Caudal coalfield, where I live, there have been 600 deaths in the mines (the ones that we know about, as in the civil war they burned the previous archives) from 1889 till 2006 when they closed them. Of course they did build a sports centre, which when they opened it didn’t have any toilets and is practically unused. All around us everywhere there are heaps of rubble, which bit by bit they are trying to clear up. But reindustrialization, which is what will create stable work so that there is still life in the region, almost nothing.

Secondly, I am amazed to see that lots of people object to this subsidy, I didn’t want to write this but there are subsidies to other sectors like livestock farming, agriculture, fishing and many more. Personally I am happy about that, I would rather that the subsidies went to workers than that they went to those thieves who rob us every day.

Thirdly, after the end of the civil war, I think that many of you don’t know that the miners worked an hour a day for free for many years, to repair what Francoism destroyed, when in our houses there was not enough to eat.

Four. In 1962 the miners started a strike which spread all over Spain, in which we won many of the rights that all the Spanish people have up till now and which they are trying to snatch away from us. In this strike there were many beatings, many people imprisoned, and many people who were exiled to other provinces of Spain, separated from their families, and who only returned in 1980.

Five. Regarding early retirement, it is a myth that miners can retire at forty and you talk about quantities of euros as if we had won the lottery. The reality is different, in the payments which people who have retired early receive, a part is made up of their extra payments. We make social security payments of 50%, so every two years we work, we pay an extra year of social security, for example I have worked in the mines for 25 years and I have paid 37 and a half years of social security payments, how many of you think you have made the same level of payments?

Six. You say that the coal they bring from abroad is cheaper than Spanish coal, I’m not convinced but taking it as true, do you want to see us working like slaves like in other countries? I don’t want any worker anywhere in the world to be a slave.

I’m going to write this because it really happened. I’ve worked alongside workmates from Czech Republic and Poland, when they came to Asturias and started to buy things in the shops, they were amazed because they could buy the amount they wanted and in their own country they couldn’t do that. The first Christmas they spent with us they bought a bar of turron (traditional Christmas sweet) in each hand. We asked them why they did that and they said in their country they couldn’t afford it and their wages only gave them enough to eat, and that badly. What I want to say is that if we don’t defend our rights we will suffer the same.

Seven. Regarding the roadblocks on the motorways I will say to everyone who is complaining because the miners have made it difficult to get to work or study and who say that when they have problems in their company, they will go to the workplaces of others to “annoy them”. I will say to them that whenever other comrades from other industries came to ask for help do defend their jobs, we stopped work for 24 hours, giving support here and abroad.

In the time of the strikes of the English miners, we stopped work and we made a collection to send to them so they could feed their families. Does anybody doubt that we would unite with any affected workers? But it seems that now it’s too much effort even to ask others for help. Supporting one another is fundamental, but what we do is the opposite and so those at the top always play with an advantage.

If all the Spanish workers were as united as the miners, the rulers of this country would think long and hard before making the cuts they are making now, I can assure you. Think about who is really stopping you going to work or going to class, with firing people so easy now and the cuts in education. The people who are stopping you are the politicians.

I would also like to say to the people who say that we should go to Madrid to the doors of the Ministry and “leave everybody else in peace”, yes, we have gone there, but the censorship in the media means maybe they are not giving you all the facts.

I strongly believe that a worker who defends their rights is not a terrorist like now they are calling us for fighting to defend the wellbeing of our families.

I invite you all to leave your houses and defend what is yours. Staying at home, you are letting them bit by bit bring hunger into your lives.

They want our children and yours to be illiterate like us, that we see the walls of the schools more from the outside than the inside, because an illiterate people is more easy to rule.

Keep yourselves informed. Question everything you see on the television, now you have internet, mobiles, you can be in permanent contact, organise, in the way that you want, pacifically or directly on the barricades, but organise! Make objectives to achieve quickly as the government moves very quickly when things are in their favour and they know it.

Take the word “fear” and the phrase “for what, it’s not going to change anything” out of your minds and take control of your future.

If there is anything you don’t understand in what I’ve written or you want to ask me a question about something specific, if I can, I will answer with pleasure.

Many thanks to those who have supported us from other provinces and from other countries.

Salud

Juan Jose Fernandez, Asturias

http://solfed.org.uk/?q=north-london%2Fletter-from-an-asturias-miner

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.industriall-union.org/support-spanish-miners

[Delenda Carthago]

N1rjUxYnsQw

[bricolage]

excellent stuff.

[Sasha]

BtTXWJyVIpE

[Buitraker]

Yesterday arrived to Madrid and do night demostration


DvikKKQG_QA


http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/imagenes/2012/07/10/album/1341935494_039495_1341960711_album_normal.jpg

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

The BBC's Tom Burridge, in Madrid: 'The march is not just a demonstration about mining, but a show of feeling by the general population'

Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy has announced a sales tax rise as part of austerity measures aimed at cutting the public budget by 65bn euros (£51bn; $80bn).
VAT will go up almost immediately from 18% to 21% and there will be a 3.5bn euro cut in local authority budgets.
EU officials welcomed the changes, made in return for a eurozone bank bailout.
Thousands of people are protesting in Madrid against government measures, and police have fired rubber bullets to quell the demonstrations.
The people have joined a march by miners campaigning against major cuts to industry subsidies.

Rajoy's austerity plans

* VAT increase from 18% to 21%
* Rise in reduced VAT rate on public transport, hotels and processed foods from 8% to 10%
* Basic goods VAT on bread, medicine and books stays at 4%
* Christmas bonuses suspended for public sector workers
* Unemployment benefit cut from sixth month out of work
* 30% cut in councillors in some areas
* Subsidies to be cut by 20% in 2013 for political parties and unions

(More at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18792427 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18792427))

[ВАЛТЕР]

Fighting between protestors and police in Madrid.



Violent protests erupt in Spain after miners' protest

Riot police and protesting miners clashed in Madrid today as the Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy announced further austerity measures.



Fearing for their livelihoods, they had trudged day and night across the country to bring their protest to the capital and today the anger of Spain's (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/) coal miners spilled over into violence on the streets of Madrid.

As the miners marched down the city's main boulevards, chanting, waving banners, brandishing sticks and setting off fire crackers amid clouds of thick smoke, they were confronted by riot police.

Some threw and bottles at the police who were trying to contain them. Volleys of rubber bullets were fired into the crowds in response, with dozens of protestors led away in handcuffs, some with blood streaming down their faces. More than 20 people were injured, including police officers, demonstrators and onlookers.

Just a few streets away, Mariano Rajoy was outlining and then having to defend his latest programme of cuts, the toughest round of austerity measures since Spain's transition to democracy. "I know the measures are not pleasant but they are imperative," the Prime Minister told Spain's congress.

The plight of the miners has inspired sympathy across Spain and become a symbol of the nation's wider troubles and what is regarded as the "unfair burden" put on the middle and working class by politicians desperate to meet the demands of Brussels and save Spain from a full blown sovereign bail-out.

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Among the protestors were miners who had marched south for 18 days, many from the mining heartland of Asturias, covering more than 250 miles, in protest at a cut in state coal subsidies that will force the closure of many mines and put hundreds out of work.
Others had staged underground sit-ins deep within the mines and were bussed down from mining towns in conveys converging on the capital against Madrid's decision to slash coal industry subsidies this year to €111m from €301m in 2011.
In the early hours of this morning the miners gathered in Madrid's central Puerta del Sol for a vigil illuminated by the lamps on their helmets as their numbers were swelled by supporters and the ranks of those who have already lost jobs since the start of the economic crisis.
"We have to take to the streets to fight because the time is coming when we won't have enough to eat," said miner Jose Ramon Pelaz, 38.
Gathering outside the Ministry of Industry later, amid placards emblazoned with slogans against the cuts and the ruling conservative Popular Party government, Carlos Marcos, 41, a miner since the age of 18, warned: "If they don't pay attention to us, we'll be back - with dynamite."
The protests culminated on a day when Mr Rajoy announced a new round of austerity measures aimed at cutting a further €65bn off the state budget within the next two and a half years in a further bid to tackle the nation's spiralling debt.
Pepi Garcia, a 52-year-old hotel waitress and the only breadwinner in the family who must support two unemployed adult children on her wage of just 900 euros a month, joined the miners protest.
"I'm not here just to show solidarity," she said. "We have to protest to stop the madness that is happening in Spain."
"Rajoy is defending the banks and the rich," she said voicing a common sentiment. "He would rather save the bankers than the miners."
Alejandro Casal, 28, a factory worker walking with fellow union members, said: "This is a struggle for the working class.The people need to be here on the street to say 'enough is enough."
Another protestor said he blamed the politicians for all of Spain's ills that have left the nation sinking into a second recession and with an average unemployment rate of almost 25pc, rising to 50pc among the under-25s.
"Rajoy promised he wouldn't touch our health care or education or raise taxes," he said. "The reality is everything is falling apart. What's happening here is like a dictatorship, it's unjust and I am so angry."

[Sasha]

the marching miners have reached the spanish capital madrid and so did the violent repression of their struggle, some reports of what happened/what is happening

http://theduckshoot.com/blog/miners-protest-spain-cops-shoot-11-year-old-girl/
http://www.defendtherighttoprotest.org/riot-police-attack-protesters-marching-in-support-of-spanish-miners/
http://theduckshoot.com/blog/spain-shocking-unprovoked-police-violence-at-peaceful-miners-protest/
http://www.vice.com/read/the-battle-of-soton-mine

[ВАЛТЕР]

What am I to say about this but "Fuck the police."

From this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/violence-madrid-t173474/index.html?p=2479094#post2479094



Carlos Marcos, 41, a miner since the age of 18, warned: "If they don't pay attention to us, we'll be back - with dynamite."

[Blake's Baby]

There is a good thread over at LibCom about the situation in Spain; http://libcom.org/news/coal-mines-ignite-asturias-10062012

It goes back to Jun 10th, and there's about 7 pages of it, with lots of photos and links (some of it in Spanish).

It is increasingly resembling a warzone there, the police seem to be acting with ferocity to the strikers and the marches on Madrid. A big day of demos called for tomorrow, and more marchers turning up in Madrid over coming weeks.

[La Guaneña]

What is that blue flag with a cross, comrades?

Beautiful videos and photos, by the way.

[DDR]

What is that blue flag with a cross, comrades?

Beautiful videos and photos, by the way.

The flag os Asturies, a country in northern Spain.

[La Guaneña]

By what I saw and heard the people saying in the videos, the miners have lots of support in many places across Spain. Are there talks about a general strike?

Also, thanks, DDR. :)

[GiantMonkeyMan]

http://vimeo.com/45610208

From what I understand, essentially at some event for skateboarders etc the police think that the crowd waiting to get in is a protesting crowd and fire rubber bullets at them. Fucking acab.

[La Guaneña]

http://vimeo.com/45610208

From what I understand, essentially at some event for skateboarders etc the police think that the crowd waiting to get in is a protesting crowd and fire rubber bullets at them. Fucking acab.

That's what it seemed like.

If anything, it shows that the cops are pretty confused and scared from the past happenings. Time to bring the rockets into town, I say.

[Sentinel]

Merged a multitude of threads on this extremely interesting subject. Let's keep the discussion concentrated in this thread from now on.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Very interesting situation.

Brave, brave boys and girls, those miners and their families.