Spain’s housing strike targets pay and tourist lets
Spain’s general strike on 11 November now has two demands: affordable homes and higher pay. Speaking in Bilbao on Friday, Unai Sordo, head of the CCOO trade union, said the housing problem hits Spain’s islands and tourist areas particularly hard. His union is preparing for the strike alongside other unions taking action on the same day.
Pay joins the housing demands
CCOO wants pay rises of 4% to 7% in collective agreements over the coming years. It also wants the statutory minimum wage to rise by at least 7%. Sordo expects a substantial stoppage and says the shared strike date will help bring people out to protest.
A push for affordable homes
Sordo wants Spain to have at least one and a half million homes with protected prices. He says earlier protected homes were allowed to pass into the open market, leaving the country without enough public housing to influence prices.
He also wants to stop homes being used for tourist accommodation, at least in areas where the housing market is under strain, and to limit rents there temporarily. That argument reaches beyond big cities to islands such as Mallorca. Sordo says cheaper housing elsewhere does not necessarily make life easier: wages there are often lower too. The union plans to press both demands in the 11 November strike.
Source: Europa Press / Mallorca.com