Transport workers strike coinciding with the Mobile World Congress is cancelled

Barcelona (ACN) - The Spanish Trade Union of Driver and Railway Assistant Workers (Semaf) has cancelled the strike which would have seriously disrupted the Catalan Railway services (FGC) and which was programmed for the 25^th to the 28^th of February to coincide with the Mobile World Congress (MWC). FGC manages two underground lines in Barcelona. Particularly it runs the line connecting the Fira de Barcelona Gran Via venue, where the main activities of the MWC will take place, with the rest of the underground network and the city centre. Partial delays were scheduled at different times in the morning, afternoon and the evening and would have changed from day to day. Such disruption has been avoided thanks to an agreement reached last Wednesday between Semaf and the FGC, managed by the Catalan Government. After the announcement that strike action was cancelled, FGC declared that railway services will work completely normally from the early hours of the morning.

According to Semaf, FGC has promised to honour an agreement made on working conditions and to improve security conditions. At the same time, the company would review the disciplinary proceedings taken against train drivers, which is a petition made by the union. The delays programmed at different times depending on the day are all cancelled and the railway services will follow their normal timetable.

FGC calculates that about 8,000 people will use their train services during the Mobile World Congress. The company is going to duplicate train services and will add three more convoys to every train, as it runs the only underground line connecting the Fira de Barcelona venue with the rest of the underground network and the city centre.

This is not the first time that public transportation unions have threatened authorities with going on strike during the Mobile World Congress. This top event of the cell phone-related technologies has moved out of the centre of Barcelona for the first time to take advantage of the facilities on the Gran Via. The most direct way to go there is by going on the FGC train system and stopping at the Europa | Fira station.