Action at the National Library in Madrid

On the morning of the 4th of Februrary, the CNT Madrid gathered in front of the National Library to again demand the reinstatement of our comrade Marta, Begoña and Sara, dismissed from this institution for reporting the ilegal outsourcing there and to demand the direct and permanent employment of the more than 400 subcontracted workers whose jobs, besides being precarius, cost the National Library over 40% more than they would if they were employed directly.


This Saturday we were not alone in our struggle. We were accompanied by the Yellow Tide, against the cuts and in defense of public libaries, which was called by the Platform against Loan Payments in Libraries. This day of struggle and soldiarity was no surprise for anybody; the cuts and closures of libraries we have been suffering lately is something that we cannot continue to tolerate, The number of people who came to this action is a display of the need to preserve culture which is free for everybody. The Yellow Tide read it's manifesto and embraces the National Library. Although we had decided not to embrace this institution which exploits and dismisses us, we embraced the initiative of the Yellow Tide and all the people that came there to defend the library and show us their solidarity.

We are very clear that this is more than a crisis of capitalism; it is also a crisis in the management of public funds, of wastefulness and, above all, of the diversion of public capital to private companies such as outsourcers which do not substain themselves in terms of budget or guaranteeing the labour stability that the workers demand.

In the last few days we learned that the National Library has new regulations and we will see if they now will have the autonomy to employ directly. We will not accept more excuses for continuing to eliminate public employment in this institution, we want them to abandon their policies of subcontracting and also to maintain the existing jobs, without forcing people to change their contracts as public sector workers. We'll see how everything turns out, hopefully they will not let them employ "volunteers". For now, we do not trust in the goodwill of the administration of the National Library and do not trust any of their statements, which always serve to whitewash their image. We demand a clear compromise of maintaining the personnel in the National Library, for creating a civil employment position each time that a workplace opens up, for example through transfer or retirement, and, of course, an offer of civil employment each time that a contractor firm has finished collecting its public capital through subcontracting, in such a way that this type of exploitation and plundering will disappear and subcontracted workers will be employed directly and permanently without the need to fire anybody.

We received descriptions of solidarity actions from sections of the IWA and other friendly organizations:
Poland:
http://www.internationalworkersassociation.blogspot.com/2012/02/solidari...
Moscow:
http://internationalworkersassociation.blogspot.com/2012/02/h.html
Romanía:
http://iasromania.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/pentru-readmiterea-muncitoril...
Germany:
http://anarchosyndikalismus.blogsport.de/2012/02/05/koeln-solidaritaet-m...
TOGETHER WE CAN!
ORGANIZE AND FIGHT!
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Contacto: personal.bne@cnt.es