The crisis that the freight transport sector is going through has turned into an 'everyone against everyone'. The distribution accuses the Government of harming the sector with its rescue of transport, the large companies threaten again with a lockout if there is no aid and the unions denounce that they are being "used" by the employers, who have not sat down to talk of your claims. Everything that will come to a breeding ground has known a critical point next Tuesday, when the Government decided to approve or not the incentive package that it promised to carriers in December to paralyze the lockout that was flying over Christmas.
The distribution companies, known in the sector as chargers, want to paralyze
at all costs this battery of measures, which require the prohibition of drivers carrying out loading and unloading operations of vehicles of more than 3,5 tons or the review of fuel prices. As the employers' association Aecoc has defended, these initiatives "are going to have serious consequences for the business fabric -especially for SMEs, since they clearly put the competitiveness and efficiency of the value chain at risk".
As published in this newspaper, the Government is committed to having a decree ready that articulates all these incentives before the end of February. But the days go by and the decree is not approved, they weigh that in private representatives of the Ministry of Transport assure the carriers that they will not take long to be taken to the Council of Ministers.
This whole situation is presenting some uncertainty in the sector, which, as ABC presented, has been particularly affected by the rise in natural gas produced in recent months. According to the calculations of these companies, a deficiency that has increased the monthly costs by more than thousands of euros.
Faced with pressure from the shippers, the National Committee for Road Transport (CNTC) issued a harsh statement in which it accused the distribution companies of "bad practices" and recalled that the Government's commitment is "firm, since it does not it is only signed by the minister herself, but has been taken into account by the Council of Ministers”.
“If carrier organizations such as Aecoc do not applaud and recognize it as an essential sector, they do so because words are free and it does not cost them money, because when it comes to really dignifying the sector and treating it accordingly to that recognition, the income statement and launches all its power mechanisms”, the statement abounds.
In the sector, there is concern that pressure from distributors will end up delaying the arrival of the approved text at the Council of Ministers. They also regret that only Aecoc is heard, when other shipper associations support the requests of the transport sector.
The same sources report that, due to this, the tension between the carriers is "maximum". Also note that some employers in the sector are already threatening to call strikes again if next Tuesday the Sánchez government does not give the green light to the decree law in the parameters set last December. An agreement that the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, “announced as a historic moment due to the calling of the sectoral strike in the middle of Christmas”. In all cases, the sector trusts that the text will be in the BOE "on the dates and in the agreed format".
This whole situation has left the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda between a rock and a hard place, which is receiving pressure from both sides and could face a second strike threat in just a couple of months.
Sources from the department headed by Raquel Sánchez acknowledge that they have worked on the transport aid decree, but they refuse to date its approval. The next few days will be crucial in determining her position.
drivers respond
The other front with transport has been opened by the unions. Workers' Commissions (CC.OO.) issued a statement in which it regretted that neither the sector nor the Ministry of Transport "have adopted a single measure to solve the problems of the sector that highlighted the threat of a lockout in December" in relation to to the "precarious" situation of drivers.
In this sense, they accuse the department of Raquel Sánchez of "failing to fulfill the commitment to create a social dialogue table for the transport of goods by road". While in the case of the employers, he believes that they have "used" the situation of the workers in the negotiations "to dress up and justify requests that were strictly economic by the large transport companies."
From the transport sector they reject these allegations and remind the unions that "for years they have not made the slightest effort" to support the drivers. "They even refused to participate in the agreement between employers and European unions for the dignity of road workers," adds the executive vice president of Astic, Ramón Valdivia.
