The unions study calling a general strike for the housing crisis on November 11

MadridUnions are considering calling a general strike in the State over the housing crisis on November 11, two days before the electoral campaign for November 29 begins, as reported by the UGT in a statement released this Wednesday. This date is gaining the most weight, although the unions – CCOO, UGT, and the Confederation of Tenants' Unions (CSI) – will meet this Wednesday afternoon to set it definitively or choose another. November 11 is the proposal that the Tenants' Unions have initially put forward to CCOO and the UGT.

If November 11 is finally chosen, it will mean that the 24-hour general strike will take place two days before the start of the electoral campaign for the Spanish elections on November 29, which Pedro Sánchez called early precisely due to the impossibility of passing two housing decrees following the eviction in Madrid of Maricarmen Abascal.

The case of this 87-year-old resident of Madrid has triggered a wave of indignation across the State, with mobilizations, rallies, and encampments like the one at Puerta del Sol. The Tenants' Union has led the protests and had been pressuring the major unions for days to go on a general strike in the face of difficulties in accessing decent housing.

The announcement calling for a general strike has already received criticism. The Spanish employers' association CEOE and the Catalan Foment del Treball have questioned its legal basis, as they consider that it does not respond to a socio-labor motive. The general secretary of CCOO, Unai Sordo, argued this week that the demand "will not only be about housing," but that it will be "fundamentally" about the "need to boost" a wage increase: "Housing is eating up half of many families' salaries, they are two things intimately linked," he stated.

It is true that the general strike proposed by the Tenants' Union puts housing and rental prices in the spotlight, which is why CCOO and the UGT were measuring how it could fit with a socio-labor demand. The housing problem, however, affects the population's purchasing power – the upward pressure on prices takes a large part of workers' wages – and even many companies recognize that it is a difficulty when it comes to finding employees. This is the point to which the two unions have finally clung, as they have not hesitated to point out companies, but also public administrations – in particular the central government – in the face of the need to safeguard workers' rights regarding wages. The goal of the Tenants' Union is for it to be a "massive strike that paralyzes the country" and that "manages to win its demands".