La Laguna Home Care Workers Threaten Walkouts Over Unpaid Wages

Home care workers in La Laguna, almost 200 strong and mostly women, are worried they won't get paid for October. According to Carmen Urquía, head of the workers' council for Intersindical Canaria, the company in charge of the service told them last Thursday that they can't pay because the La Laguna City Council owes them money.

Because of this, the staff held an emergency meeting and voted to start a series of walkouts on November 6 if the company and the City Council don't sort things out. Urquía said the walkouts would be on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 11:00 a.m. until the end of the day. They'll still provide essential services beforehand and will give notice of the walkouts next Monday.

"For now, we're just doing walkouts, but if it's not resolved, we'll take further action, like protesting outside the City Council and the company, and a bigger strike," said Urquía. She hopes the problem will be fixed before then and that they won't have to take those steps, "because we understand that we work with people" and it's an "essential" service.

Drago Canarias also commented on the issue, criticizing the City Council's "inability" to manage things, saying they owe "more than four million euros" to the company providing the home care service.

However, the City Council said yesterday that the amount owed is "less" than that. They explained that "since the last extension of the home help service ended and they're working on a new contract, payments aren't being made in the usual way, which has caused delays."

"The company is currently updating its bank details to comply with new European regulations that came into effect on October 8. This will allow the City Council to make the outstanding payments next week," they added.