Municipality Workers come out on Strike

National Federation of the municipalities’ sector decided to escalate the protest movement today by going out and organizing marches, sit-ins and protests outside the headquarters of the municipalities here on Thursday, to coincide with the national strike that was launched by the workers of this sector on its third day, declaring that the response to the strike reached on Wednesday 80%.

An official of the federation, Ait Khalifa Ezzedine told “Echorouk”; “The response to the strike that was launched by the municipality workers on Tuesday reached high rates in many municipalities almost ninety per cent, as syndicated also received calls by many workers across the wilayas to engage in its ranks and organize general assemblies that allow that installation of branches in the municipalities that are not structured, while a lot of workers, who are not members in this syndicate, show their solidarity with the protesters, and decided to engage in the protest movement, as workers who are affiliated to the central syndicate to strike, to express their dissatisfaction of the deterioration of the social and professional conditions of the municipality workers.

“The wilayas which noticed the largest wave of strikes are Boumerdes, Bejaia, Tizi Ouzou, Bordj Bouariridj, Khenchela, Batna, El Ouad and Ghardaia, in the light of the decline in the response in the capital Algiers, due to the on workers to thwart all the efforts that were designed to establish branches of syndicates, without ruling out the idea that the workers who refused to join the protest have another job, because no worker accepts to be paid with no more than 20.000 dinars a month. The response of some municipalities were irregular because a lot of services insist to open their doors to citizens, including the services of the Civil state. Strikers were not subject to abuses by the administration with the exception of some individual practices, including the prevention of syndicates from holding associations or putting up posters.

“Our demands are; respecting the right to strike and create free syndicates, the integration of contractors who constitute 70 per cent of the total workers in this sector, and reconsider the fundamental law of the sector, and the law on common sectors and professional workers, , and raise the grant of women who do not work from 50 AD to 8000DA, and the integration of the arrested activists, as the syndicate will hold a national council to declare other strikes at the national level beginning from next Sunday”.