Alicante Waste Workers Stand Firm: Strike Set to Begin on June 16

It is now official. The cleaning and waste collection service in Alicante will go on strike. The company committee of Netial, the contract awardee, announced this Thursday, through the Csif union, that the workforce will stop on June 16 and 17 and from the 25th of the same month indefinitely if there is no progress in negotiations.

The organisers argue that the measure "has been inevitable due to Netial's attitude in negotiating with workers on various aspects that it has systematically failed to comply with." The strike could impact the waste removal generated on the Nit de la Cremà de Hogueras, as the stoppage is set to begin at 00:00 hours on that date.

The company committee recalls that it has given Netial time, as requested when it took over the urban cleaning contract in Alicante in 2023. Specifically, it committed, according to worker sources, to "regularise the inherited situation from the previous concessionaire." From their perspective, this has not happened.

After 15 months of negotiating the new collective agreement, it has not been possible to reach an agreement. Csif reproaches the company for following "the strategy of saying yes to everything, only to say the opposite the next day." They add that Netial wants the workforce to accept an all-inclusive approach "regarding a 1% salary increase without back pay, which, if not accepted, affects improvements in areas such as promotion, specialities, or weekends."

In response, the company committee states that employees feel "blackmailed by the company," which they accuse of taking "reprisals in the form of sanctions" after receiving the formal strike notice.

The organisers point out that in the last ten years, workers have only enjoyed a salary increase of "1.2% one year, 1.2% another year, and 0.60 cents per day for street sweepers, the latter amount even needing to be claimed as it is sometimes not paid." They insist that an increase adjusted to the CPI is necessary.

The workforce representatives reproach that "shift rotations are not being fulfilled, which are being lost because they are neither amortised nor replaced." They go further: "Points of the current conditions sheet are being breached, which could lead to the annulment of the contract."

In light of all this, they consider it essential to incentivise internal promotion, which they indicate "has not been carried out for two years." Meanwhile, they criticise that, according to them, external personnel is being hired.

The workers emphasise that they have been driving vehicles with the side-loading speciality for years, "without the company recognising or adequately compensating it." Finally, they mention that there is an "overload on container adjustment drivers, who are collecting 130 and 160 containers on routes when the conditions sheet states there should be 110."