Mediation ends municipal bus workers strike in Barcelona

Download article in original language : Es0206211FES.DOC

At the beginning of June 2002, a binding decision issued by a mediator appointed by the regional government put an end to an indefinite strike by municipal bus workers in Barcelona. The dispute had escalated to the point of leaving the city without bus transport, as a result of the distance between the workers' demands and the employer's offer, and of the minimum service requirements imposed by the authorities (which were ignored by the strikers).

On 28 May 2002, workers employed by Autobuses de Barcelona, the Barcelona municipal bus operator, started an indefinite strike. The action had been preceded by a five-day strike from 6-10 May, during which neither the firm's workers' committee nor Transportes Metropolitanos de Barcelona (TMB), the owner of Autobuses de Barcelona, made concessions.

Workers' demands and TMB response

The main demand of the Autobuses de Barcelona workers was for a pay rise of 20%. Since 1992, their pay increases have been set by the national state budget law because, although it belongs to the local authorities, TMB is a publicly-owned company. Pay rises have thus been set in accordance with inflation forecasts, with corrections to account for the actual rises in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI). According to members of the TMB workers' committee, there were two reasons for the high level of the pay demand: variable elements of pay have not been corrected in line with the cost of living since 1992; and the CPI for Barcelona is far above that for Spain as a whole, so workers have suffered substantial decreases in real pay. TMB offered an increase of only 3%, arguing that its contract with the government and the binding nature of the state budget prevented it from offering more.

During the dispute, one of the main issues was whether pay in the company is high or low in comparison with the public transport sector as a whole, similar companies and the region. The company claims that wages are in the medium-high bracket, as the standard gross annual income is EUR 25,300 and the minimum is EUR 22,830. Wages are therefore higher than the average for the sector and also higher than those at the Madrid urban transport company, Transportes Urbanos de Madrid, where there was a similar dispute in 2001. The TMB workers responded that the standard wage cited by management includes supplements that are not received by the whole workforce, such as those for night shifts or multi-skilling. Furthermore, the company divides the annual pay figure by 12 months, whereas the workers' committee divides it by the 16 payments actually received by the workers.

The workers' second demand was to bring the pay of recently recruited employees into line with that of other workers in the company. The background is that in 1994 the majority on the workers' committee signed an agreement with TMB that included a 'dual pay scale'- ie lower wages for newly recruited workers. At that time, this type of agreement, which was also reached in some other companies, was criticised by many trade unionists (ES9705209F). A subsequent collective agreement signed in 1998 did not include this differential in full, but provided that new employees would receive a wage of EUR 900 per year less than normal for the first three years of employment. The workers' committee proposed the elimination of this continuing differential. The company was prepared only to reduce the period of employment required for new employees to reach wage parity with other workers.

The third demand concerned working time. The workers' committee sought a 35-hour week, arguing that this has already been established in many public sector agreements (in many town councils, provincial councils, and some regions, though not the central administration - ES0205204F) and that, as TMB is a public company, its workers should also have their working hours reduced from the present 37.5 hours per week. TMB considered that this was not feasible.

Bargaining and union representation

The negotiation of agreements has been difficult at TMB since 1987, among other reasons due to the composition of the workers' committee. Up to that year there had been two unions represented on the committee - the Trade Union Confederation of Workers' Commissions (Comisiones Obreras, CC.OO) and the General Workers' Confederation (Unión General de Trabajadores, UGT) - but an autonomous union, the Independent Trade Union (Sindicato Independiente), was created as a split from the other two unions. A company-specific trade union, the Association of Urban Transport Drivers of Barcelona (Asociación de Conductores de Transportes Urbanos de Barcelona, ACTUB) was later created.

The 1998 collective agreement was signed by only two trade unions, CC.OO and the Independent Trade Union. UGT withdrew at the last moment because a large proportion of the workforce was dissatisfied with the restrictions on bargaining imposed by the state budget. The conclusion of this agreement led to great changes in trade union representation at TMB. The two unions which signed it lost many of their members to UGT, ACTUB and the General Confederation of Labour (Confederación General del Trabajo, CGT), which had not been a significant force at TMB up to that time. Membership is a major issue in a company in which 80% of the workers belong to trade unions. The trade union elections (ES9902298F) that were held shortly afterwards led to great changes in the composition of the workers' committee: ACTUB obtained six representative and the chair of the committee, while the Independent Trade Union, CC.OO and UGT won five seats each and CGT four.

For the negotiations over a new collective agreement in 2002, the workers' committee's position was based on the demands of the more radical trade unions. ACTUB and CGT made high demands, taking advantage of the dissatisfaction among the workers, mainly over pay. The issues of contention included: the increase in the cost of living; loss of income from overtime (an agreement signed by the committee and the company in 2000 reduced the high levels of overtime, which led to the creation of over 300 new jobs); and the high pay rises obtained recently by some private passenger transport companies. The rest of the unions were afraid that they would lose members if they rejected these demands, which seemed to be accepted by most of the workers.

Dispute and mediation

By the time that the indefinite strike was called on 28 May 2002, the dispute focused on pay, with positions that were difficult to reconcile and disagreement over the figures. Furthermore, the dispute was radicalised by the minimum service requirements imposed during the strike and the refusal of company management to allow rotation of workers to provide these services. As public transport services are considered to be essential for citizens, minimum services during strikes are laid down by the Department of Labour of the government of Catalonia (Generalitat). In this case they represented 50% of buses at rush hour and 25% during the rest of the day. According to the workers' committee, the company organised these services in such a way that they covered the city centre fairly well but left other areas with less service. The perceived excessive minimum services and their unequal distribution radicalised the strikers, who decided not to provide them and left the city without buses. As a consequence of this, the company initiated disciplinary procedures against more than 200 drivers, which radicalised the strike even further. There were incidents of tension and confrontation with the police. Due to the total lack of minimum services, the government appointed a mediator who reached a binding decision on 1 June.

The mediator's decision states that pay will rise by 4% overall, with 0.9% on top of the CPI in fixed pay and greater increases in variable pay. For new employees, the only difference is that in the first year they will receive 80% of the 'workplace bonus', rising in the second year to 90% and in the third year to 100%. Finally, the mediator recommended that the company should withdraw the disciplinary procedures against strikers.

The workers and the company accepted the decision. When making the announcement, the chair of the workers' committee stated that the committee was not in favour of supporting the national general strike called by CC.OO and UGT on 20 June in protest at the government's unemployment benefit reform (ES0206204N). This may be because the majority trade unions provided little support to the Barcelona bus strike, which they considered to be politically motivated (the Socialists control Barcelona city council and TMB is a municipal company).

Commentary

In the author's opinion, the strike at Autobuses de Barcelona was the expression of a series of badly resolved disputes and contradictions, rather than of poor working conditions, though the jobs involved are arduous.

In such cases, there is a contrast between the bargaining capacity of the parties and the imposition of external economic criteria that may be accepted by the company but not by the workers. This makes it impossible to establish a serious relationship between work and productivity. Public transport is a public service that is partly paid for by the state budget, and strikes may have very negative consequences for the general public. To palliate these consequences, the minimum services established by the authorities during public transport strikes tend to be so high that they convert the dispute into a symbolic protest, thus prejudicing the workers' right to strike. Of course, if the response of the workers is to ignore the minimum services, the strike cannot continue for long, and an indefinite strike is out of the question because it would be unfair to the public. The debate on forms of protest in the public sector has been open for a long time, and no suitable formula has yet been found.

The strike at TMB shows that the trade unions should not give up their role of leadership, even if at times this means telling the workers things they do not wish to hear. The obvious risk is that 'local radicalism' will be accentuated in public companies that enjoy total job security and good working conditions. (Fausto Miguélez, QUIT-UAB)