Work in Spain
I have been looking carefully over the past few days for more information about the general strike in Spain and the more I have looked – the more I have felt that the general strike in Spain is pointless. Not least, it seems to be concealing the problems of Spain – rather than highlighting the real changes that are needed here.
Look at what the supporters of the general strike in Spain are saying and you will see hackneyed arguments from the hard left that are, surely, time expired. These revolve around protecting ‘worker’s’ rights – at all costs. This is despite EU ‘workers’ already having embedded rights and protections that are unimaginable in virtually any other part of the world.
In any event, the term ‘workers’ is a dodgy one to use now – as so many people in European countries work for themselves. The latter, as self employed ‘workers’ or small business employers, have no job security – let alone compensation should their work cease or their businesses collapse. For them, ‘workers’ rights are a myth and applicable only to employees, particularly over-cosseted state employees (for whom the term ‘civil servant’ has become an anachronism).
You may ask what this has to do with the general strike in Spain?
Well, one of the (many) reasons why the strike is unlikely to have much impact is that only a small part of Spain’s ‘workers’ even belong to a union. According to an excellent article on Bloomberg, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) believe that ‘total union membership in Spain is (only) 14%’.
More cutting, is a comment (also from the same Bloomberg article) from Juan Jose Dolado from Carlos III University Madrid. He ‘estimates that 99 percent of people who have lost their job in the crisis aren’t represented by unions’ and that the unions ‘don’t help Spain’s 20 percent unemployed’.
All of this would indicate that support for the general strike in Spain on the 29th September 2010 will be low.
However, you may well ask: what problems are being ‘concealed’ by the general strike in Spain?
Well, the truth is that Spain needs a massive ‘shake-up’ that should go well beyond what is being done now with regard to the reform of current labour legislation. This is because day to day work in Spain is rarely easy and often inefficient. Two reasons are paramount.
Firstly, Spain’s bureaucracy is notoriously sluggish. Indeed, if you have the bad luck to to deal with government administrators then you will find it almost impossible to get anything done. Once they have passed their civil service examinations (oposiciones), government employees (local or national) are almost unsackable and have an almost immobile job for life. To make matters worse, they have no idea about the private sector with absolutely no cross-fertilisation between the two sectors. This means that the state sector has taken lack of dynamism to a supreme (and stultifying) state of the art.
Secondly, Spain seems unable to shake-off its endemic corruption. This affects every area of life and (seemingly) every decision that is taken. This is as true of a tiny pueblo, as it is of regional and national matters and is (unfortunately) part and parcel of the culture of Spain. This means that efficiency and effectiveness is invariably compromised by the very damaging self-serving aims of powerful individuals and their networks.
Frankly, it is pretty tough to work in Spain and actually getting things done is often far from easy – and, I say that as the author of a book on working in Spain!
Of course, you can work in Spain sucessfully but, my goodness(!) you really do need to know the ‘rules of the game’ and look for specific niches – whilst understanding how, often, the very culture of Spain governs what is really possible.
So, will the general strike in Spain make Spain more effective and help the shuddering economy?
Of course not. Most Spaniards realise this, know full well why Spain has inherent problems and – actually – what needs to be done…
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RELATED INFO: Bloomberg Article and Work in Spain
Small strike in Spain. Nobody noticed much.