The general secretary of CCOO, Unai Sordo, warned this Thursday in Toledo that Spain «will continue to have a low birth rate» if three fundamental elements are not guaranteed: access to housing, a decent salary, and a care strategy that allows families to reconcile work and family life without having to give up their jobs.
«To protect and support the families of people who are in Spain or come to Spain, what must be guaranteed is access to housing,» Sordo stated. He also added the need for a «decent salary» and a care network that prevents «having a child from being the same as having to leave work,» something that continues to mainly affect women.
The labor leader framed the debate on birth rates as «one of the great ideological struggles» of the country and recalled that this trend «did not start yesterday» and is repeated in other European countries. He mentioned that for the last three decades, the population replacement rate has not been met solely by the birth rate of people born in Spain.
In this sense, he criticized those who believe that «to boost birth rates, one must restrict women's right to free motherhood, restrict the right to abortion, and expel immigrants from Spain,» and emphasized that «Spain requires a flow of migrant people,» who are largely responsible for the population increase.
«If people stop coming to Spain, in a decade the country will come to a halt, just in case anyone hasn't noticed,» he concluded.
The CCOO secretary in the region, Javier Ortega, also spoke to demand that the Toledo City Council catch up on pending payments to the company managing the municipal nursery schools, so that this company can regularize the salaries of its workers, who are already in a mediation process prior to a strike. Ortega also asked the Department of Sustainable Development and the public company Geacam to sit down to negotiate the new collective agreement, as the workers demand, who held a rally this Thursday in Zocodover Square.
He noted that the weekly working week in the region is around 39.4 hours (nationally it is 38.4), and the gross salary is 24,034 euros (compared to the Spanish average of 28,050).
