28 February, 2011
Paperworkers belonging to ICEM affiliates FIA-UGT and FSC-CCOO in Spain effectively shut the nation’s paper and paperboard industry on 23 February. And they will do again on arch if the paper employers’ association (Aspapel) does not this week make major revisions to its one-sided 2010-2012 bargaining agenda.
The two unions reported close to 100% strike turn-out in nearly all the selected mills and paper plants in nine regions.
Due solely to Aspapel’s year-long failure to compromise on a long-lapsed national collective agreement, Spanish paper plants last week lost 24 hours of production and face that again this week. Multiple plants of Torraspapel, SAICA, SCA, SmurfitKappa, Europac, Newark Group lost production, as did single plants of Holmen, Ibertissue, Kimberly Clark, Sonoco’s Papertech, and Gomà-Camps.
Paperworkers Strike at Torraspapel’s Almazá-Soria Region Mill
Central staff of SAICA joined the 24-hour strike last week. At three of four of Barcelona-based Torraspapel’s paperboard plants, strike participation was 100%. At the fourth, it was 60%. SCA tissue and paperboard mills at LaRiba, Valls, and Mediona were affected. The ICEM took hold of global solidarity, and that Solidarity Call on February 23 can be found here.
Spanish paperworkers have grown angry over Aspapel’s unwillingness to bend from sweeping flexibility changes and downward wage structure revisions. The dispute is far less on salaries – the two sides are close on that – than it is on imposing adverse salary structures that, in effect, place the burden of a slumping Spanish economy, in part, on paperworkers. In Spain’s paper sector right now, harsh revision of the consumer price index (CPI) calculation is the same as the race to the bottom.
Some 17,500 paperworkers are affected by industry intransigence in meeting a 2010 national labour agreement.
On a different issue inside the Spanish paper industry, a roof collapse which spewed concrete over paper-making machinery caused shutdown of the former Papelera de Besaya mill in Torrelavega, Cantabria. Fortunately, no one was killed or injured in the 18 February mishap. The mill had been operating since November 2010, following Catabria government takeover of a bankrupt paper enterprise.