The president of the Confederación Empresarial de la Comunitat Valenciana (CEV) and vice president of the CEOE, Vicente Lafuente, has described the general strike of November 11 as “totally failed, absolutely untimely” and “political,” considering that it has had “practically zero” follow-up, which puts it at 2.57% compared to the 60% that the calling unions claim.
As he explained, with the data gathered among the different federations and companies and the 2.57% with which he estimates support for the strike, he interprets that the result of the call “is a lesson that workers are giving us that the way to solve the problems we have as a society is not by strikes or by confrontation and that the path is through dialogue.”
Lafuente has stressed that tools such as teleworking “have shown us that many people who had reservations about being able to go to work, with teleworking have been able to continue with that activity in a normal way.”
In his opinion, both in housing matters and in the field of labor relations, “we already have enough tools so that we can sit down and solve the problems.” In the latter area, he has defended the existence of social dialogue tables at the state level and has advanced that they are going to urge “to meet and sit down.”
“But we must do it the unions and employers’ organizations to solve our problems,” he insisted, while reproaching that the “politics” has used social dialogue because “for eight years now there have been no social dialogue tables because everything comes through royal decree and through imposition.”
Along these lines, he has lamented that “politics is using social agents and we see this clearly in that strike call. Therefore, we expect to solve in the social dialogue tables the problems of labor relations and those of housing, which is a problem we have as a society,” he has maintained.
For the president of the CEV, these issues “are not solved with a strike; they are solved by sitting down and talking, talking about having free land so that we can build. We’re talking about the high taxation that housing has; we’re talking about how young people can access those first payments before a mortgage that stops them very much.”
Lafuente has made an appeal "for dialogue, for work, which is what as a society has always worked for us, and by fleeing that polarization, these confrontations and this burning street that I think leads us to nowhere".
Accordingly, he has reiterated that he believes the strike "has failed", and he has called on knowing how to resolve "together" the "problems we have as a society" and has expressed his desire that the demonstrations this afternoon "with the legitimate right to claim and to demand" be carried out "from the most absolute normality". "From social organizations we offer work, good relations with the trade union agents, and trying to solve the problems for society," he has settled.