SUZANNE MILLS Friday, September 10 2010

Mira usted, the workers — if they are any left in Spain — are tired, fed-up and that’s why the protests have started. Today there’s been a huge demonstration, una manifestacion enorme, in Madrid’s Vistalegre Complex. Thousands and thousands turned out. The big unions have called for a general countrywide strike on the 29th. We will shut this country down. Nothing will run. Too much unemployment, too much injustice.

Let me tell you, Senora, I knew that come September things would get hot. The World Cup is over, summer holidays are done and reality has arrived. The reality is, we the workers are suffering. It’s more than time the unions stop backing this government and start backing the working people. The majority of my friends are unemployed, ‘en paro.’

If you are not en paro, if you are one of the lucky few to get a job, they underpay, they ill-treat you, trample on your rights, break the law if they can because they know that in this everlasting crisis the worker is more and more desperate everyday. Who is going to complain? Who may quit? Not a soul, not when you have a mortgage or rent to pay, not when the banks are taking back hundreds of houses everyday.

You know they cut civil servants’ small wages but Spanish MPs get a secure fat pension after two terms of service on a grand salary? They put part of their pay in a pension fund and when they lose their seat they get a payment from the fund. How do you like that? But the PSOE Government wants the average person like me to work for 35 years or until the age of 65, not 60, before receiving a pittance on which to retire. These politicians make sure they take care of themselves.

What? They took a wage cut too? No me importa, I don’t care; they still have it better than me. You telling me that it is like that everywhere? Bueno, but it is wrong. Don’t forget that many of these MPs have a second job or business, too, yet this PM Jose Luis Zapatero is bringing labour reforms which will make it easier for the worker to be dismissed and harder for us to get permanent work. Workers will only have one month of unemployment benefits. One month! Un mes! After a month you have to do a course and look for work but there is no work to get. They, the so called socialists, are bringing this at a time when everyday people are sent home. Es injusto! Unfair!

There will only be more anguish yet they are ‘felices como perdices’ because they have a guaranteed salary and a guaranteed pension. Happy like pappy. First pension reform, then wage reform, now general labour reform to cut public spending? Enough is enough. Spain’s economy is in ruin. Strike, huelga! What do they care if we work or not? There are no jobs. No hay trabajo!

Mujer, dime, tell me, what makes their few years of service more valuable than mine, less stressful than mine? I work long hours in Madrid traffic. In Madrid traffic! I help passengers, the sick, the old, women with heavy bags. If I don’t drive well, if I break a red light, I lose my licence; my job is over at once and I get no pension. They don’t perform, they get a salary for years, then a retirement package. Most of them don’t have to be qualified for the job. I must learn to drive before I get a taxi badge.

Look at that garbage man over there. Look at his job, cleaning up other people’s mess. If that is not duty to your country, what is? I think he means more in my daily life than a politician. If he does not come to work for two days I notice; they don’t turn up for a month, I could care less.

You see these, they should have resigned a long time ago, but they refuse to call an early election. Since 2008 Spain has been in crisis. First they told us there was no crisis, then they did nothing, then they blamed the immigrants, and now they want to make us, the Spanish people, pay for their sins.

Well the crisis is theirs because the people are out in the streets. This is almost the end of 2010 and we are entering 2011 with no hope and everyone is saying that unemployment is expected to rise. To rise! But our benefits will fall. They are too wicked. Son muy crueles.

Mira, that’s why on the 29th when we shut it down and come on out, we will only be chanting one thing, ‘Zapatero resign, Zapatero, dimisión!’ It‘s time for our Prime Minister to join us on the bread line. Except he has a pension. You see what I mean, Senora?