Spain’s air traffic controllers targeted: 8-years' prison/sedition charges for strike

[Hannah Bell]

The Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) governments’ top law official, Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido, is demanding prison sentences of up to eight years for hundreds of air traffic controllers who organised a strike last weekend. The controllers face charges of sedition under the Criminal Law Procedure of Air Navigation.

The controllers are being denounced as insurgents who must face the full force of the state. Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero described the strike as an “open rebellion against the rule of law” and “an affront to the constitutional order.”

“The government will not hesitate to use, without ignoring the requirements of proportionality, all the instruments of the law to end situations such the one we experienced at the weekend,” Zapatero declared.

The controllers’ “crime” was to call in sick en masse in defence of health and safety conditions and in opposition to government plans to privatise 49 percent of the state-run airport authority, Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea (AENA). Almost 90 percent of the controllers have exceeded the legal maximum of 1,670 hours of work a year. Early this year, the government increased the controllers’ hours from 1,200, cut overtime to a maximum of 80 hours a year, and slashed wages by half.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/pers-d11.shtml

[OutNow]

1. Solidarity

There is only one way to deal with these threats - Solidarity from other unions and mass organizations. Hopefully the Spanish unions, which have a long history of struggle, will stop the government's attempt to target the air traffic controllers.

I certainly hope there is not a repeat of our sad history with the PATCO strike in the 1980s. PATCO was a small, conservative union, that backed Reagan's campaign. When they went on strike against long hours and incredibly stressful working conditions the AFL/CIO mostly watched the strike go down in flames, believing it didn't have anything to do with the "real" unions. Of course that was just the start of the attacks against the unions that haven't stopped in the last 30 years.

[Citizen Worker]

2. OutNow, you have nailed the driving force behind the loss of Union density. When Reagan came into

office approximately 25% of the workforce were Union members. Today it is approximately 11% and declining. I recall well the days following the mass firing of the controllers and waited for some sort of response from Labor. Nothing but silence. Several weeks later my Union rep came into the workplace and polled members. The question, "what do you think we should do?" My response was, "why are we still here?" Since then the passage of NAFTA, GATT, WTO has only hastened the decline of Union membership and now Obama has negotiated a "free" trade agreement with South Korea that will further decimate the ranks of the working class.

[boppers]

3. Legal maximum of 32.11 hours of work per week.... before it was 23.7 hours a week.

(Take the number, divide by 52).

And then there's this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/world/europe/09controllers.html

"Instead, in a country now suffering with 20 percent unemployment and facing further austerity measures in response to the European debt crisis, it only highlighted their own extravagant salaries: the average Spanish controller has been earning €350,000 a year, or about $463,000, with some making as much as €970,000, or $1.29 million."

:nopity:

This isn't about being fair to labor, any more than a stock market executive "sick out" is about labor.

[Hannah Bell]

4. That's not true. It's the same crap they trot out every time, like how the

"average" auto worker made $120 an hour -- by attaching retirees' checks & other costs to current workers.

The "average" Spanish air traffic controller doesn't make $1.2 million, no matter what the NYT says.

And even if they did, it wouldn't be grounds for charging them with sedition & throwing them in prison for 8 years for a sick-out.

As for the 32 hours a week v. 24.

The same issue came up during the Reagan strike: there's a reason to limit controllers' hours: safety.

As the article notes, 90% of controllers have worked more than the maximum, & since O/T pay is limited to 1.5 hours a week, it ain't for the overtime money.

You & I have got to stop meeting in these labor threads; seems you were playing your tiny violin during the auto bailout as well, for the "wealthy" autoworkers.

lol.

[boppers]

5. By all means, please post competing links, with different numbers.

This is how dialog works (and threads get bumped back up).

Do you have links that show an Air Traffic Controller in Spain makes as much there as, oh, a garbage collector, a seamstress, a miner, a trucker, the kinds of folks the US labor movement was built around?

[Hannah Bell]

6. not sure why i'm obliged to provide evidence that an air traffic controller gets a garbageman's wage

since i made no such claim.

you appear to be claiming that air traffic controllers should be paid like garbagemen though.

in fact, it seems to be your opinion that all workers should get their pay cut.

[boppers]

7. I'm asking you to provide other perspectives.

Why should an ATC get an investment banker's wages, and is that the actual case?

Do I think jobs done better, faster, and safer, by computers and robots, should be paid at the same rate as the cost for computers and robots?

That I am.

Heck, most investment bankers are useless (IMSHO) at this point, as computers are faster, and smarter. Unskilled labor is hanging on because automation isn't cheap, but in my lifetime, I expect that to vanish as well.

Spar with me, make me look like an idiot, I don't care.... actually, I do, come to think of it, because I want to learn other perspectives.

I bump labor threads, and discuss this, because I started as child laborer at a sewing operation, and watched a HUGE shift in my lifetime from unskilled labor to technocracy. I got more and more technical, more and more skilled, and wound up in a good place, but folks who wanted to be paid for work that was replaced by new machines did not.

[Hannah Bell]

8. yeah all those buggy whip makers. lol. could you quote the manual any more obviously, please?

The article compares "average" figures for spain that include overtime & are highly skewed by about 5 people --

and compare that number to european & us figures that omit overtime.

propaganda, unsurprisingly.

europe is going to privatize & combine (de-nationalize) their air traffic control; that's what's behind this.

don;t you get tired carrying so much water?

[boppers]

9. ATC=buggy whip makers?

Were you trying to say they were overpaid, and obsolete?

Why aren't you providing me, and the DU audience, with other sources?

Other perspectives?

[CreekDog]

10. An Air Traffic Controller shouldn't get a bankers wages

they should get paid more since they perform a more important job more successfully than bankers do.

i'm glad you made that comparison. it actually clarifies everything.

it's amazing in a conversation about people being overpaid, the point is made that paying an air traffic controller as much as a banker is ridiculous.

strange huh?

[boppers]

12. Yes, it points to odd disparities, society-wide.

Bankers make a lot, as do ATC, but what about teachers? Nurses? EMT's?

Why are some jobs revered, and others treated callously?

I agree that an ATC should make more than a banker, but I don't think a banker should make more than a Nurse, EMT, or Firefighter.

[Starry Messenger]

11. recommend.

[boppers]

13. Kick for more opinions eom