The general secretaries of UGT and CCOO in Andalusia, Óskar Martín and Nuria López, have assessed the "positive start" of the 24-hour general strike called for this Wednesday, 11 November, supporting on the ground the pickets organized since midnight at Mercasevilla and, at the first hour of the morning, at the Plaza de Armas station in Seville.
In a statement, Martín stressed that the strike is taking place "normally, with safety and responsibility" during the first hours, from the information picket set up in Plaza de Armas, one of the main transportation hubs in the Andalusian capital. He also recalled that the union action began at dawn at Mercasevilla, where more than 400 delegates gathered to inform the workers entering the site.
"We have been in Mercasevilla, informing the workers who were entering the site, and now we find ourselves at Plaza de Armas, one of the main transportation points in Seville, conveying information so that they can exercise their right to strike as an instrument of transformation and demands," he said.
The head of UGT-A reiterated that the purpose of these pickets is to explain to the working class the reasons for the call and to defend the strike as a legitimate mechanism to demand changes that will make it possible to improve the living conditions of the population.
On the other hand, the general secretary of CCOO Andalusia, Nuria López, has been present since midnight at the Mercasevilla picket, where she highlighted that the perceptions at the start of the day are "very positive during the first stages of the strike across all of Andalusia."
"It is clear that people want to show their discomfort and their disagreement with an extreme speculation situation that we workers are suffering because of the housing price," López said, placing emphasis on the consequences of policies that, in her view, dismantle the welfare state and denounced "the low wages that Andalusian workers have in relation to the excessive price of the grocery basket."
In this context of conflict, the CCOO Andalusia leader demanded the immediate reactivation of social dialogue to curb precariousness and warned both the Junta and the Andalusian employers' association that the protest is based on reasons "more than enough and therefore citizens shout enough already."