Extraordinary meeting of the Spanish executive to end strike at Barcelona airport

The situation at the Barcelona airport is back to a 30-minute wait at the security controls due to the presence of the Spanish Guardia Civil Police. In an attempt to put an end to the security employee strike, outsourced to Eulen, the Spanish Government's cabinet will meet on Wednesday afternoon to evaluate the conflict and to start the formalities to force obligatory arbitration between the company and its workers.

The head of the Barcelona section of the Republican Catalan Left (ERC), Alfred Bosch, criticized the Spanish government for its awful management of the labor conflict at the Barcelona airport. He highlighted the fact that they had not only outsourced part of their responsibility to a private company so they could exploit workers with miserable salaries but afterwards, when those workers went on strike during high season, they used Spanish police forces to mitigate the effects of the strike. Bosch noted the importance of this infrastructure for both Catalonia and Spain and said he believes that the latest measures taken by the Spanish government worsen the situation instead of solving it.

In the same line, worker unions demand a global solution from the Spanish government to the problems in Spain with private security companies, which have become obvious thanks to the conflict at the Barcelona airport. According to the unions, this conflict has shown that outsourcing security guarantees neither decent work conditions nor the quality or quantity of their services.

The unions hope that the cabinet meeting this Wednesday will address the specific elements involved in solving the global problems of the sector and that they will introduce guarantees in the area of public recruitment for this type of services so that there are proper working conditions and quality service.

Iñigo de la Serna, the minister of public works, had announced the extraordinary meeting of the Spanish ministers on this issue on Tuesday after the meeting of the so-called Barcelona airport crisis committee with representatives of the Spanish government, the Catalan Government and the Barcelona City Council.