Palma.The Secretary-general of the UGT, General Workers' Union in Balearics, Lorenzo Bravo yesterday issued a stinging attack on the new Balearic President, Jose Ramon Bauza, and his Minister for Tourism, the former Mayor of Calvia, Carlos Delgado.
Addressing union members at a rally in Minorca just days after Bauza announced that some 800 public sector workers face losing their jobs as a result of a fresh wave of government cuts, Bravo accused Bauza of having lost the plot and Delgado of wandering around like a cow without a cowbell.
Bravo also had a warning for the Socialist party.
He said that after a year of social cutbacks. Prime Minister Rodriguez Zapatero has resorted to neo-liberal policies.
Bravo admitted that the Balearic government had too many public companies, 96 of the 168 are to be axed, but the UGT leader said that negotiating tables are to be used for negotiating, not announcing sweeping cuts.
He (Bauza) is coming for us all and if this is allowed to continue, socially he is brewing up the perfect storm, Bravo warned as members of the UGT across the country took to the streets in protest against central government's austerity measures.
Bravo said that apart from the 800 public sector workers which face losing their jobs, so do a further 2'000 in the health and education sectors. Bauza should be talking to us about how we can ease the knock-on effects of the cuts. In times like these when hundreds of public sector jobs are at stake, we should all be cooperating for the common good, he underlined. A wave of local protests are being planned this week by the UGT which doesn't approve of the way the new Minister for Tourism is conducting himself. The new tourism law with the emphasis on condo hotels is only going to benefit the hoteliers, not the industry as a whole. He's just playing into the hands of the hoteliers while many hotel workers such as cleaners etc. are being exploited. Our task is to defend employment and social welfare and that is what we intend to do, warned Bravo, hinting that the Balearics could be facing a winter of discontent.