Antonio Garamendi (CEOE) questions the legality of a possible general strike for housing

The president of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), Antonio Garamendi, does not see a possible general strike over housing as “within the law,” since “it is not within a labor conflict.” This Saturday, Garamendi expressed his respect for the housing protests taking place in Spain, but he announced that he would act in the event that a general strike is called after the rejection of the two decrees in Congress, because that would be "illegal."

This was stated before the media, within the framework of the La Toja Vínculo Atlántico Forum, which is held in O Grove (Pontevedra). The president of the CEOE thus responded to questions regarding the possible call for a strike in protest against the current housing situation, the fall of the decrees that sought to regulate the situation and the demonstrations that are taking place throughout Spain.

“That citizens can demonstrate, express their opinion and do what they believe is normal, because logically democracy is there,” he defended; But he has distinguished this fact from another hypothetical scenario, that of “invading the rights of others.”

Garamendi has stressed that he agrees with the diagnosis that there is a real problem in Spain, a housing crisis, but a total strike, if it were finally proposed, would have an immediate reaction, because interruptions of normal activity have legitimacy and are legal when trying to resolve a labor dispute and this is not the case, he has observed.

“No one can escape the fact that (housing) is a real problem in Spain,” he said, but neither can proceed in the wrong way, he stressed, highlighting that such a fact would affect the economy of companies.

Complex problems, he continued, are not remedied with “easy solutions” and in this sense he has also criticized that to “fix this” the path of “invading the private part, which is also a great right” has been proposed.

“This is not serious,” he argued, and he also asked what has happened in the eight years that Pedro Sánchez's Government has been in office with “so many thousands of homes that were promised to be made public, because that is what public money is for, to manage this issue.”