IGNACIO FERNNDEZ TOXO & CNDIDO MNDEZ Secretary generals of the CCOO and UGT unions

The government has prompted the strike; we had no other option

MIGUEL NGEL NOCEDA Madrid EL PAS 28.09.2010

The heads of Spains main unions, Ignacio Fernndez Toxo of CCOO and the UGTs Cndido Mndez, have spent the month traveling the length and breadth of Spain, xplaining the reasons behind the general strike that has been convened for Wednesday. As well as sharing the same arguments to back up the industrial action, they also clearly work well together. This particular interview took place four days before the strike, in Madrids Crculo de Bellas Artes cultural center, where an event attended by actors and celebrities in support of the strike was due to take place. Question.Was the strike inevitable? Ignacio Fernndez Toxo. It cant be said to have been inevitable. Its the result of a radical turnaround in economic policy, triggered by an incredibly harmful set of labor reforms, which mean a backward step in basic rights for workers,

such as hiring, firing and working conditions, all of which will take us to the extreme of eliminating the possibility of collective negotiations. Whats more, the problems of the job market are not dealt with by the reforms, as is clear from the fact that half of Spain has a jobless rate between 10 and 15 percent, while the other half is well over 25 percent This harmful set of labor reforms is a backward step for basic workers rights The government has adopted a series of incoherent stances on economic policy and all with the same labor laws. But above all else, the strike is all about the prevention of new changes that affect the nucleus of the social protection systems, the most visible expression of which would be delaying the obligatory retirement age to 67. Cndido Mndez. The brutal turnaround of the government in terms of its discourse and policies made it inevitable the nature of the reforms, the savings

plan and the threat that hangs over the pensions system. The government has prompted the strike. We had no other option but to call it. Q. What was behind the governments change in course? F. T. There are several factors, but the last push most likely came from the panic that the markets generated when faced with the Greek crisis and the speculative movements toward Portugal and Spain, while Europe looked the other way. That is the turning point that brings an end to expansive policies to save the financial system, and prioritizes public debt, which damages jobs. C. M. Whats more, the crisis in Greece whose economy

makes up just 2.5 percent of Europes has been used to apply a catch-all cure, with Germany playing a leading role. The Spanish government, while holding the European presidency, does not know how to play its cards, and allows itself to be dominated when it should have been focusing on a formula to fight against the crisis, and not accept an imposition that will see us slow down. The government which, it has to be said, has been committed to protecting civil rights has displayed a series of incoherent stances with regard to economic policy, such as when the prime minister said that lowering taxes was a leftist thing to do. The government has not only been left without a discourse, but has also begun to desperately cling on to measures that it was fighting against just a few months ago. Q. Is Zapatero the instigator of that change? Some believe if the strike isnt a success, the way will clear for neoliberal policies Labor costs are still advantageous compared to the price of energy C. M. He is responsible, first and last. Q. Is the government expecting the strike to fail?

C. M. I wouldnt go that far. Its part of a kind of craziness at the moment, in which they are probably not conscious of the eventual consequences. But there is an offensive from certain sectors of the media that consider the unions to be the biggest obstacle to taking advantage of the crisis and weakening our social-protection system, dealing with a final phase of privatizing certain fundamental services and weakening collective negotiation. But I have the feeling that the government acknowledges the impact of the strike, given that just a few days before they included tax rises for the rich in the draft budget F. T. There is clearly a desire within the government for the strike to be a failure. They are convinced that what they are doing is best thing for the country, but the facts tell another story, because we will find ourselves in a precarious situation in terms of growth and the job market for a long time. There are some who think that workers organizations are a kind of nuisance, and that they should be gotten rid of, and if the country deals them a setback by not supporting the strike

then the path will be cleared for the advance of neoliberal policies. Q. They are saying that if the strike fails, its the end of the unions... F. T. Not at all. The success of the strike is not linked so much to participation, but whether the result is visible. Im not even considering the failure of the unions; it would be Spanish society which would have to resign itself to coming to terms with the fact that there is only one way of dealing with this situation. Anyone who says that we are stagnant they are the same people who until recently were complementing us is making a mistake. The union movement is in permanent flux and the unions in Spain have displayed the ability to adapt to the new social and economic circumstances like no other organization. Q. If the strike is a success, what should Zapatero do? Can the government go back on the reforms? F. T. Yes, because one law can be changed with another law. Labor reforms are reversible, whatever Zapatero says. [Former prime ministers]

Gonzlez and Aznar said the same as what Zapatero is saying now, so he should look to them. Q. Has the government put itself in the hands of a corporate caste, or international organizations? C. M. There are businessmen who are used to international competition and who would not say anything if they had to pay less for firing staff, but they know what the problem is. Labor costs continue to be an advantage compared to the price of energy, which is a burden that literally kills Spanish companies. The pressure comes from business organizations who work in ideological terms, as well as some pressure groups made up of self-styled experts. These groups are listened to by the government, and once decisions are made, they start criticizing the administration harshly for having succumbed to the financial markets. Q. Who are these experts? C. M. Im not going to mention them, because they love the attention. But they know who they are.

GENERATION IN CRISIS (PART 3)

Two decades on, the policy of employment creation through low wages and short-term work, like that promoted by the junk contracts of the 1990s, has manifestly failed. Unemployment among the underthirties remains dangerously high
Back in 1993, in a bid to tackle unemployment levels of more than 30 percent among the under-25s, the government of SocialistPrime Minister Felipe Gonzlez introduced an apprenticeshipscheme that paid the equivalent of 234 a month with no unemployment or sickness benefits. Such jobs were immediately dubbed junk contracts, and the term has stuck to this day.Overall unemployment in 1993 was 22 percent, and the following year it rose to 24 percent. Among the under thirties it soon rose to almost 50 percent. Since then, the reforms and agreements with the trade unions aimed at creating jobs for young people have degenerated further into ad hoc solutions, pushing down real wages and exposing employees to increasingly unstable, casual labor conditions. The idea was to make the new job market hopefuls without experience more attractive to employers, getting them

How good intentions turned into a tool for exploitati on

into the labor market on the assumption that their working conditions would stabilize over time. The policy of using shortterm contracts was done in good faith, based on the idea that employers would later offer young people full-time contracts, and thus generate employment. But instead of becoming a way into the labor market, it has become a way out, admits former Socialist Party Labor Minister Jess Caldero. When I was minister, unemployment was going down, but we couldnt work out why unemployment benefit payments continued to rise: it was because of the rapid turnover of workers employed on shortterm contracts. But the deeper problem is the productive model we have in this country, he concludes. In short, unemployment and short-term contracts are inextricably linked. The politicians and experts interviewed for this article all agree that while the

Politicians take it for granted that labor market rules and employer incentives have a limited impact on youth employment; the problem is structural
AMANDA MARS Madrid El Pas. 28.09.2010

labor law framework encourages the creation of employment, it has a limited impact on deeprooted structural problems. In fact, the policies that are needed to generate employment must focus on honing training to meet the needs of the labor market. This means going to war on early school leavers and promoting higher education. It means encouraging entrepreneurship. It means focusing on valueadded sectors. It means being less dependent on low skill industries such as construction, and which are overly dependent on the ups and downs of the economy. It means weaving a new productive base from the decisions of thousands of businesspeople. This much vaunted new economic model has been repeated like a mantra over the last few years. Young people

these days believe that no one knew how to set up a company before, says Carles Campuzano, of the Catalan nationalist party CiU, who thinks a more flexible labor market is needed for microbusinesses. Young people find it harder to get work in all countries, not just in Spain. But the situation in Spain is worse than in the rest of the EU, because overall employment is so high. In Germany the overall rate of joblessness is 7.5 percent, and 10.4 percent for the under 25s. In France it is 9.5 and 23.3 percent respectively. In Spain these figures stand at 18 percent and 37.8 percent. One in 10 university graduates say they are employed in jobs for which they are overqualified. According to the OECD, Spaniards are still not being trained and educated to take advantage of the opportunities in growth areas. Employment policies help to reduce the impact, but they do not solve the problem of mass redundancies in a crisis. They aim to change the distribution of employment, but it is economic recovery that really creates jobs. We cannot expect much from employment policies, which is why we have macroeconomic policies, says Valeriano Gmez, a former government

employment appointee who now works at the Ortega y Gasset think-tank. The recently passed labor reforms offer incentives to employers to take on young people, as well as encouraging them to provide long-term contracts. Contracts for the unskilled will only be applicable to the under-24s, while apprenticeship contracts, for those with a qualification, will have a maximum lifespan of five years. But although the new policies will in theory create a more skilled workforce, sources at the Labor Ministry admit that until this country recovers economically, their impact will scarcely be felt. When it comes to trying to create jobs for young people, just about every formula has been tried; they do not address the deeper issue, which can only be tackled by encouraging entrepreneurs, says Manuel Pimentel, a former Labor Minister under the center-right Popular Party. In response, the government has introduced measures to get funding to entrepreneurs more quickly and at lower interest rates through the Institute of

Public Credit. It is also working on changing the legislation on vocational training. We have a 78-million plan to improve training. We have asked the regional governments to match this sum.We have to find sources of employment: biotechnology, renewable energy the addedvalue sectors, says Miguel Soler, who heads the Labor Ministrys Vocational Training department. The opposition Popular Party (PP) dismisses the governments belated efforts to fix the countrys labor market. Labor reforms are an instrument, but the important thing is to have coherent economic policies. There is a limit to what rewarding employers for hiring young people can do: if a company needs staff it will hire; if it doesnt, it wont, says Jos Ignacio Echanz, the PPs employment spokesman. Lorenzo Serrano of the Valencian Institute of Economic Research also doubts the effectiveness of giving employers incentives to hire. What is needed is to create jobs in the first place, he says. And yet the countrys main political parties, at a national as

well as regional level, are all in favor of giving financial incentives to employers to take on young people. The PP has its Young Persons First Employment Contract, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) also plans to subsidize employers, as well as talking of more flexible contracts. The Catalan CiU speaks vaguely of improving and monitoring training contracts. Only the left-wing United Left disagrees with the policy of rewarding employers. We need to reduce the number of different contracts, and create employment through public investment.
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Training contracts dont work, because employers prefer to take on interns free of charge, points out the partys Jos Garca Rubio. The Blight One in every three unemployed people in Spain are under 30. There are 1.5 million jobless aged between 16 and 29, of whom 361,000 are still looking for their first job. The youth unemployment rate is almost double the total unemployment rate. The data leaves no room for doubt: better education leads to lower employment. The unemployment rate is 38 percent for people aged

between 24 and 29 who only completed obligatory schooling compared to 16.6 percent for those with higher education (9.4 percent in the case of people with doctorates). Despite this statistical advantage, nearly three out of every 10 graduates work in a job for which they feel over qualified and the economic incentive to have a career the salary advantage over someone without this training is lower than the OECD average. The problem, according to labor experts, is the lack of a genuine connection between the courses that are studied and the actual needs of the market

I cant get by without my parents help

More than half of Spaniards in their thirties are still not financially independent. A generation is going to waste, sociologists warn
ELENA HIDALGO, Madrid EL PAS 28.09.09

I feel so disappointed. I have been working for several years and I think that by now I should be able to live my own life, but now I am going to have to leave the home I have been living in for more than a year, says Elena Palacios. The 29-year-old is packing up her belongings in the Madrid apartment she has been living in for the last 15 months, and moving back in with her mother. Goodbye to her own space, a space where she could write, and listen to music; goodbye to the life of an adult. The problem is simple: the 900 she earns a month as a library assistant isnt enough to live on in a city like Madrid, where her rent alone eats up 700 a month. Without her mothers help, she wouldnt even have been able to enjoy her brief months of freedom. Elena is the first to admit that she got her sums wrong. She has been working since she was 23, and for the last four years has had an indefinite contract for a 35-hour week. When she decided to move out of home, she applied for a grant from the Housing Ministry, and was awarded 210 a month toward her rent. But the

money didnt arrive every month: I was awarded the grant in July 2009, but didnt get the money until January 2010; and I havent received anything since then. Initially she asked for help from her mother: I was in such a state that she would help out with food and other costs. Elena is not alone: government figures show that more than half of Spains under29s still live at home. Carmen Cobos, Elenas mother, is a civil servant on an average wage. Elena has spent all her savings, and mine as well, she says resignedly. Carmen has two other daughters, both university graduates, whom she brought up to believe that hard work brings rewards. But Elenas return to the nest has changed her outlook. I am very disappointed. I feel as though everything I have taught them has been for nothing that I was wrong. Alessandro Gentile of the Spanish National Research

Council says that the repercussions of this countrys unstable labor market run deep. When the children find themselves being paid badly and with shortterm contracts, this affects the rest of the family, emotionally and economically. He has written extensively on the mileurista (the generation now into its thirties still earning less than 1,000 a month) phenomenon in Italy and Spain, and points out that it isnt just young people whose expectations are shattered when they enter the labor market: their parents also feel as though they have failed when their children cant find a wellpaid, secure job and must say or return home. And in turn, the children feel they are a burden on their parents. Gorka Martn-Curto, a 28year-old journalism graduate, says the worst thing for him is to have to continue living at home. It really bothers me to see how this affects my father, and I know that for as long as I need it, he will help me out, he says. Gorkas

father, a doctor, owns the apartment that his son shares with three others, and often allows his son to miss paying the 300 rent. I know I am lucky, but I dont like the situation, Gorka says. Gorka works part time for 600 a month for late night channel call tv one of those that broadcasts in the small hours and in which a presenter encourages viewers to enter wordsearch competitions. Prior to this he was unemployed for six months after losing his previous job on a website. He now finds that what was meant to be a short-term solution has turned into a longer-term setup. I took the job because it was 600 or nothing, but Ive been there for a year now, he says. So, while holding down his part-time job, he presses on with his own plans. He has shot a pilot episode of a sports and leisure series of his own devising, one that he hopes to sell to a terrestrial digital television station.

He has also made a short film he has presented to the Sitges film festival, Insatiable and Discreet, which won a prize in the Shots Festival. None of this would be possible, he admits, were it not for the financial cushion he gets from his family, in the form of an inheritance and a redundancy settlement. He is a member of what Gentile calls the generation of heirs. If you are lucky enough to come from a family with money, you may make it. But this generation is also creating the conditions for future inequalities, he warns. Alicia Canes is a 28-year-old Fine Arts graduate from Barcelona. She describes her dependence on her family as morally and economically unsustainable. In late 2009, she decided to move to London in the hope of building a longer-term, more secure future: In Spain the only future is unemployment. She lives with her Danish boyfriend, and works as a volunteer in the Barbican arts center. She hopes that her unpaid work will eventually result in a paid job in the arts. Her boyfriend pays the rent and

bills, and her parents give her around 500 a month for food. Without my parents, I wouldnt get by, she says. But she also admits that if her situation doesnt improve by the end of the year, she will have to return to Spain. She says that although her parents have said nothing, she feels that they must be very disappointed in her. They could never have imagined that for my generation it would be so difficult to make the transition to adult life in other words, finding a job, buying an apartment, and so on. They, and the state, have invested a lot of money in my education. But where has it gotten them? This is unfair, she concludes. Gentile says that while it is understandable that parents continue trying to help their children, even into their thirties, it is not helping in the long term. It is setting back the need for a political solution, he says. In the Netherlands or France, they dont talk about the problems of young people, but of citizens; which means that the problem has to be addressed by the state. But here, we continue to believe that the best social security is the family.

If Spain doesnt need me...

Emigration is a key theme in readers responses

Hundreds of young people have written to EL PAS in response to the newspapers series on youth unemployment, to talk about their situation. The following is a brief selection of their letters. I feel tricked When I was a kid, my parents used to tell me: We werent able to study because we had no money. So you must study to avoid ending up like us. I did what they said, and today, in my twenties, with a university degree, a masters, and several other qualifications, along with too many grants from big companies, I am UNEMPLOYED. With a bit of luck, next month I will go the United Kingdom to earn 60 a week as an au pair. If Spain doesnt need me, then I dont need Spain. Do you know what my parents say now? If we were your age, wed also leave. Roco Reina. Mlaga.

Zafra.

Sorry, mom
Dear Mom, you who have given me everything, who believed that a good education would bring me job offersWell, it turns out that I cant even go out unless you give me money for my bus fare. Cristina Palacios. Madrid.

Far from everything I love, but with a job...

I remember when I was a kid my grandfather playing dominoes in the local bar. He introduced me to his friends, one of whom had been a grape picker in France. Many of them had worked abroad. When they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said that I would be married with children by the age of 25. How wrong I was. I was born in 1980, went to school, went to university, and then went to the big city: Valencia. After five years working, I realized that my experience counted for little if I wanted promotion or a better job. I went to Germany to study. When I came back I found all that was available was low-paid work. I went to Moscow in search of work. Then I came back to Spain. Nothing. I spent months going to job interviews. Nothing. Today, aged 30, my life seems a mirror of that of my grandfathers generation. Fernando Figu Lluch Iborra. Augsburg, Germany.

Dear Father Christmas

I know that I havent written to you for several years, but I thought it was worth a try. Dont worry, I dont want toys. I have thought of something much better: a future. Amanda Surez. London.

Im doing okay
I have a university degree. I have a good job and a good salary. I live in a house with a garden. How can this be? I left Spain when I was 23. Carles Roig. London.

Its not all bad

Many young people, like myself, have put a Plan B into action to find a job. And not just any job, but a job we like. In my case, I have set up a business offering language services. It takes up a lot of time, but I consider myself lucky. And Im not the only one. We may be living through a crisis, but not everything is so bad. Estela Garca.

I am part of the brain drain

Mine is the same story as so many others who have had to emigrate. I am 31, and have not worked a single day in Spain. I speak five languages. I have worked in many laboratories, and have a doctorate in microbiology, along with two post-doctorates. And I am making another country rich. Laura Villanueva. The Netherlands.

Shakespeare got the country wrong

I am 33, and a geology graduate. After hanging up the telephone following a surreal conversation about a supposed job, the first thing I thought of was Shakespeare: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Not Denmark, William; things are far worse 2,500 kilometers south of Sweden. To emigrate or not emigrate, that is the question. Ignacio