http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/11/europe/fuel.php
Spain cracks down on striking truckers
The Associated PressPublished: June 11, 2008
MADRID: Spain got tough with striking truckers who have disrupted food and fuel supplies, deploying riot police officers Wednesday to lift blockades of a border crossing with France and a major highway outside Madrid, and making dozens of arrests.
But unions representing the strikers vowed to press on, rejecting a package of measures presented by the government to end the three-day-old nationwide protests over rising fuel prices.
One striker died Tuesday when a van drove through a picket line, and a protester died in a similar incident in Portugal, which has been hit by the same kind of strike since Monday.
One of the Spanish industries hit hardest by the strike, automobile manufacturing, warned that if the stoppage continued, the entire industry and its daily production of 13,000 vehicles would halt Thursday because parts for assembly were not reaching factories.
The strike is being waged by self-employed drivers, who represent an estimated 20 percent of the 380,000-vehicle trucking industry. They say big companies cope better with fuel-price hikes by lowering hauling rates to land more jobs.
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The independent drivers are demanding a minimum, guaranteed rate for their services. The Socialist government refuses, saying that would interfere with free-market competition.
Spanish truck drivers say their diesel costs have risen 36 percent in a year. Spanish fishermen have been on strike since May 30, also over fuel costs.
Many Spaniards are watching in frustration as a small sector of the industry begins to bring the country to its knees: Some gas stations in Madrid and Catalonia have run dry, supermarkets are reporting panic buying, and highways around the country have been clogged by slow-moving or parked trucks.
Radio talk shows and cartoons in conservative newspapers are full of digs at the government for letting things get out of hand.
"There has been a certain feeling that we were not doing much," Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said Wednesday. "We are doing a lot."
The riot police intervened Wednesday morning at La Junquera, the main border crossing with France, and removed picketers who had been blocking roads. Also, the riot police in Madrid cleared a major road leading to the city, Pérez Rubalcaba said.
The intervention was peaceful in La Junquera, but in Madrid the police arrested 34 strikers, the minister said. All told, 51 people have been arrested since the strike started, and police vehicles have escorted nearly 3,000 trucks transporting food, fuel and other goods, he said.
"There is a constitutional right to strike. There is no constitutional right to disrupt people's lives," Pérez Rubalcaba said at a news conference.
The government agreed with a nonstriking trucking union on a package of tax relief and other measures. But three unions representing the strikers rejected the package Wednesday.