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Madrid Buried In Trash As Garbagemen Strike Continues For 10th Day
The trouble with proclaiming 'victory' over the crisis in Spain (read the whole of Europe) and the ECB enabling governments profligacy with the ghost of OMT future is that it merely emboldens. As Al Jazeera reports, Madrid's garbage collectors have been on strike since November 5 to protest layoffs and pay cuts. With garbage piling up on the streets of Madrid, the mayor issued private trash-collecting companies an ultimatum on Wednesday: end the street cleaners' strike or lose their contracts. More than 30,000 residents have signed a petition to the defense minister asking for the streets to be cleaned. The following images show the chaos...
Madrid bins overflowing in the streets...
Fotografía que han sacado esta tarde en Madrid, donde comienza una huelga indefinida de barrenderos y jardineros. pic.twitter.com/0ZwmKldti3
— Alberto Garzón (@agarzon) November 4, 2013
Translation: Worker for the Madrid garbage collectors yesterday in Madrid protesting against layoffs.
Trabajador de @BasurerosMadrid ayer en #Madrid en protesta contra los despidos @CGT @democraciareal @SocialcumbreS pic.twitter.com/BuM3tlQiJG
— Florent (@frlorente) November 5, 2013
Some expressed their frustration with the strike:
Translation: The Madrid Cleaning Strike shouldn't be called a strike; it's vandalism and crime. This is how you lose the argument.
#HuelgaLimpiezaMadrid no deberian llamar huelga a lo que es vandalismo y delincuencia.Asi es como pierden la razon. pic.twitter.com/UOk05rxcDz
— Nicolás Martínez (@nicomarbel) November 10, 2013
Translation: This Madrid Cleaning Strike is lamentable and like the Third World.
Esto es lamentable y tercermundista #HuelgaLimpiezaMadrid pic.twitter.com/mu7JSHd9Df
— Berenice Flocco (@FloccoBerenis) November 13, 2013
Los trabajadores de basura #Madrid se concentran en #Cibeles. Y están dispuestos a iniciar huelga de hambre pic.twitter.com/LZpI3jGnfJ
— Desiree Hernandez (@desihdzleon) November 15, 2013
Seems to us that this might be a great opportunity to put some of the record high unemployed youth back to work... (though one wonders just how big the disincentive to work is in Spain...)
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I love the smell of rotting tapas in the morning...
Fiat is trash, no surprise the trash is on fire. Create all the credits you want out of thin air, the calories (energy) that are required to actually do or manufacture anything of real value cannot be created out of thin air. Remind us Flak, are the calories available for consumption by humanity (7+ billion and growing) increasing or decreasing?
Increasing at a slightly slower rate than the population...
This is a union problem and not an economic problem. In a country with 60% youth unemployment, the concept of unskilled laborers going on strike for higher pay is nothing short of laughable.
Keep it up, dummies. May you all be fired by morning.
Careful with the blanket statements. Driving a 14 tonne "Garbage Truck" (as you call them) is hardly an unskilled task, and is demonstrably a task that has a significant societal benefit.
Want to know how the Spanish Flu broke out ? You know, that funny mutated disease that was the biggest epidemic since the Black Plague and H1N1 ?
Rotting garbage in Spain.
Shit, this is going to be stupidly fun when a drug resistant TB strain outbreak starts in Spain or Greece.
The "true" origin was most likely to have been a Troop Staging Point / Hospital in Etaples, France, per work by Prof. Oxford (Virology, St Barts / London Hospitals Medical School) http://www.webcitation.org/5ghdULukN Seems a significant viral precursor has been identified in birds from that time (and prior), with genetic reassortment occurring in the local pigs (as we now know to be the case - pigs commonly act as asymptomatic "blending vessels" for antigenically diverse influenza variants).
Other suggested initial sources (will lesser credibility) include Haskell County, Kansas (a highly pathogenic Influenza first noted in Jan 1918), with other authors suggesting that the origin was China, via Boston (D. C. Hannoun, Institut Pasteur).
As for your drug-resistant TB - does this delight fit your bill? - http://www.tbfacts.org/xdr-tb.html (notice the XXDR-TB label dates back to 2007), and http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2013/01/india-drug-resistant-tuberculosis-why-you-should-be-worried.html ?? For an excellent overview (and up-to-date information on emerging trends - http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/, where you'll find info on all the current "hot topics"!!
Enjoy . . . . . .
Why not turn the government offices and banks into a garbage depository, they might actually serve a purpose then.
Looks like Staten Island in the '70's....
>> Staten Island in the '70's
Looks like South St. Petersburg now. I can't understand why the Africans are pissed. If it's good enough for the Spaniards, why not for imported Africans?
Makes you think about our little footprint we leave behind after just a few days he....?
Everybody doesn't mind to protest....
BUT NOT A SINGLE ONE DECIDES TO ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT LIKE ORGANISING A CLEANUP!!
Thank god I don't live in the city :)
They actually tried that, they wanted Someone Else to do it, they called it "government", but that didn't work out so well.
Now at least they can dream harder about reclaiming their sense of entitlement while swimming through the garbage.
Not quite. The residents have PAID (via taxation) for a service, which is currently NOT being provided. The argument ins't between the people who've paid, rather it is between the "money repository" structure and those expecting to be paid for providing a service.
Even if there was the capacity to provide an external collection service, would the collectors be able to dump the refuse locally, or would the rubbish dumps be closed to their vehicles (so obliging them to travel further, at a greater cost to them, and their "customers"?)
Would neighbouring Councils even be prepared to help out (and thus be labelled as "Strike-breakers" with the attendant risk of creating their own local problems?).
Whatever, let's hope the problem is fixed and soon. Rotting edible waste attracts carrion / scavenger species, and with them comes a whole raft of Public Health problems (rat fleas and Bubonic Plague might come to mind, but Leptospirosis is by far the greater risk), along with the establishment of insect pests.
Well, in fairness to them, if you don't have a truck, how do you haul the trash out of there? Even if you have a car, a VW Polo won't carry much trash. And where would you take it?
Anyways. As Frank Zappa said, "...so long as the trash gets picked up"
Well, when I was in Cairo, trash was hauled on carts pulled by donkeys.
Trash in Cairo is collected by the Zabbaleen, who are Coptic Christians. They pick up the trash for free and recycle it. So, no worries about the garbage collectors going on strike there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabbaleen
>> They pick up the trash for free and recycle it.
Those folks are being fazed out. Foreign corporations are now displacing the coptics.
When will Madrid take the Mumbai route?
Two or so million people literally living off the garbage of the rest...
Yeah, it's almost like they are against Christians there. Or something.
It was - thery took that away from them and gave it to corps...
Dude, seriously?
The containers shown in the pictures are not trash containers, they're recycling boxes which are set really far apart from trash containers. All that trash piled around it has NOT been left by residents, who would use the proper containers.
All trash containers in Madrid are empty.
We did organize a pickup in my neighbourhood, and at 4 in the morning the sweepers came in groups and emptied the containers back in the street again.
We picked it up again and took it to the dump, which believe me, was dangerous in itself.
The next day more trash had been put there by the sweepers.
The next step would be to get physical, but the thing is that I agree with the strike. They are making 1000 Euros and getting a pay cut of 43%, when the actual budget cut for their government-connected companies is only 20%.
Guess who is not only NOT getting any budget cuts, but often INCREASING their budgets.
Yeah.
It's so cute to say people are dirty disorganized pigs. There's a whole lot of projection going on when we talk about unknown others. The only organized team that would actually serve some purpose would be too close to a government coup, and yes, that is not so far off in the future, but still remembering the last civil war, we are a bit reluctant.
What's your excuse?
Take a little pride of ownership in your neighborhood and get off your asses and clean your own damn streets.......
or at least force a few people at gunpoint to clean it up...
You know, every autumn when the leaves fall of the threes, we organise in our neighbourhood a cleanup where everybody cleans up the yards and the streets and also those from the elderly who make up 50% of the people living here.
It's actually pretty fun and the kids love it.
So like you say, everybody takes a piece and cleans it and there's no problem.
But damned those who keep complaining and do nothing.
It's that "if they don't do it I won't do it either" mentallity.
Nobody will do a fucking thing anymore without getting rewarded monetarily. What ever happened to the men of this world who acted out of decency, justice, a sense of duty and responsibility? People sit around wringing their hands as the world crumbles down around them hoping somebody, usually a politician, will do something. It's pathetic.......
In a utopian society, the welfare state takes care of the sense of responsibility and the warfare state takes care of the justice. So nobody needs to be responsible for anything and justice will be still served.
This is ridiculous nonsense and completely revisonist. Cities have always struggled to remove refuse and trash. Go back and view some of the excellent BBC 1-hr shows, 'Filthy Cities' which you can view on YouTube.
>> Nobody will do a fucking thing anymore without getting rewarded monetarily.
You been out picking up litter free gratis lately?
It's called capitalism... - if it has value, it should be rewarded, no?
(should be for A Lunatic, sorry)
Look dumb-ass, garbage men should get paid to do their job. When they are not, trash piles up. When trash piles up people have two choices; clean it up themselves, which they are capable of doing, OR let it pile up around them stinking up the neighborhood, inviting vermin and disease right into their own homes. Sometime the reward is not falling prey to your own laziness, stupidity and greed...........
"Blah blah blah, bitch, moan..."
Look dumbass, people paid for said trash to be picked up, that's why they aren't as willing to do so as you pretend you would - go teach them how they should run their lives then, mr. community organizer genius (sure you aren't half black?)....
Oh, and if you're so responsible and your police doesn't do its (paid for) job, why don't you just go and do it yourself, or shut the fuck up, instead of coming here whine about it? Talk about being lazy, stupid and greedy, hypocrite.
Willfully living in squalor because someone else won't better your environment is fucking pathetic.........
I live in Madrid. Why should I pick up the trash in my neighborhood, when every year, property owners are billed, (in addition to the real estate tax) a street cleaning tax.
So, We are paying for the streets to be cleaned.
Where were you when the Spanish real estate market was booming? Were you out on the streets complaining about low interest rates, reckless monetary policy and credit growth? No, it is all "after the fact".
See, the street cleaning tax is needed to prop up bad banks, because Spain does not want real capitalism with failure of banks, because it wants to socialize the losses across prudent savers. In this way, Spain can "hopefully" blow another real estate bubble later on, which everyone in Spain loves because it creates construction jobs, and repeat another get rich quick scheme with the property market.
Sorry to say, but you've been paying into a non linear expansion of a debt based bubble which has now blown up and the underlying economy is collapsing and all the bills are coming due.
I paid cash for my property and only own one in Spain. No mortgage. No credit card debt.
I'm not arguing about the whole socializing debt point you are making, I just think its off topic. I don't support socializing losses here or in the States. I'm anti socialist.
Spain is a mess, the banking system is on life support from the ECB, the pension system is unsustainable and everyone except Madrid wants to secede. But hey, its a fun place, the food is good, the weather is great and its relatively cheap to live here vs. any other major city in Europe or the US. So I'm not complaning....
10 days... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
PIGS!!!
JUST CLOSE DOWN ALL STORES SO NOBODY CAN MAKE MORE CRAP!!
I wonder if Hugovanderbubble was able to reach his work today. He already complained about the streets smelling like a toilet on monday.
Look here, I loves me some ZH. But how dare you fill my web browser screen with advertisements from Sony. Sony sucks. They suck to such a degree that many, including myself, have vowed to boycott their products for life. Suck Fony.
Its a function of your recent "commercial" searches...
I am getting inundated with ads for Jamaica...
I would like know what I looked up to get that awesome "Shocking French Video"....
Ad block.
I don't mind really, it tells me what Big Brother thinks is on my mind...
Big Brother thinks I spend half my day watching fake Facebook slot-machine games on autospin, plus occaisonal "bitchfights" on YouTube. I must be far from waking up.
Actually, that's a tenant using my computer. Bwahahahah
Here's the solution.
Go to the Madrid zoo. Tease the monkey's out of their cages with some bananas. Show these monkey's how to pick up trash and become trash pickup.
Pay these monkey's with bananas.
Fire all these lazy unionized fucks.
Are bankers unionized? What is the real value of their labor again?
perhaps I can interest you in a financial "product" of mass destruction?
Perhaps the trashmen need a better lobby.
Go fuck yourself.
The right's fixation on small time unions would be amusing if it wasn't so tragic.
Go ahead, bust the working man. You'll still be poor and unhappy. Then what?
Yeah, I was about to say, those bananas would cost more than what they're wanting to pay the trash men...
Not every protest is a show of outrageous entitlement, in this case, the strike is about yet another instance of politicians siphoning cash to their cronies while getting everyone in more debt to pay for their hookers and maids.
.....bananas.....
You are truly foolish ( your comments on bankers aside) - and probably a union member yourself. Let me explain the basics of economics to you. Your labor is worth what someone is willing to pay you for your time, in addition to how rare or uniquely qualified you might be for a given job. Garbage collectors have no special skill set, anyone with two arms and two legs and a beating heart can pick up trash - so therefore the pool of available labor is quote large. However, the wages will have to be attractive enough for someone to want to pick up gargabe all day - hence an equilibrium price point is established. With the unemployment in Spain being what it is, this equilibrium point will be driven down as more folks will be willing to accept less pay for doing that work. Easy equation - either the gold-bricking union members do the work for the wages being offered, or someone else will. Simple.
Now go get your shine box......
Ironically, they did an experiment, and if monkeys feel they're being rewarded unsatisfactorily than others, they'll go on a strike - here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0
So much for the idea that pay fairness and labor strikes are ideological concepts.
They want to clean up the trash? Start with the presidential palace.
You know Spain is a monarchy, right (the underlying idea is correct, though)?
"unidos en la huelga, no, no, no nos moverán!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMXQ026t3zY
With my luck, I would throw down a gum wrapper in this mess and get arrested for "littering"....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCVR_ajL_Eo
Actually, you're now on a "watch" list for simply contemplating such an act.
Urban District of Columbia buried in trash despite garbagemen still drawing pay check.
Reason number 500 why public sector unions are bad policy.
> With garbage piling up on the streets of Madrid, the mayor issued private trash-collecting companies an ultimatum on Wednesday
Private trash-collecting companies yo!
... private trash-collecting companies that made huge donations to the ruling party (PP): CESPA (belongs to Ferrovial), Valoriza (Sacyr) and OHL-FCC.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-q1pRBkVlFyQ/URSyeS29MkI/AAAAAAAAG0c/xLoN-COCIu...
So when the state contracts with a "private" company that you have no say in selecting, have no control over the rates of, and have no recourse against, how, exactly, will that differ from having a public sector union do the job?
Welcome to the great fraud that is "privatization" (the exchange of one unaccountable monopoly for another).
What an insular, ignorant fool you are.
Toronto mayor Rob Ford's signature achievement, done in his spare time when he wasn't in a drunken stupor, smoking crack, or chasing whores, was to contract out residential garbage pickup for half the city. In the first week, there were the expected screw-ups, which the MSM gleefully picked up on and publicized mightily. Now that the private firm is into the task, complaints are far below what they are on the union's side of the city, and costs are also significantly less. That let Ford more or less hold the line on tax increases, which is one reason he still has a strong following. He came into power to challenge the municipal unions, did so, and won without a strike and without any disruption. As for recourse - if there are a lot of public complaints, a new competition will be held on the anniversary date of the next contract.
He wants to go after the transit workers, where ticket collectors who sit on their butts all day make $28/hr plus benefits, and the police, where six years on the job gets you $80,000/yr plus overtime. (Please note: with ~50 murders/year for 2.5 million people, Toronto's murder rate of 2 per 100,000 is far below, say, Baltimore's rate of 35 per 100,000. There have been 11 Toronto police officers killed in the line of duty in the last THIRTY years; by contrast, about 600 construction workers have died on the job. I point this out to note that Toronto police don't have a job that puts them significantly more in danger than other workers.)
How is that Rob Ford's achievement though? I am sure at least 1 million Torontonians were yelling at the top of their lungs about the graft that police officers, bus drivers, and garbage men collect.
You're the only fool in this conversation, pal. You really bought the line that they'll listen to citizen complaints and hold a fair competition after you suffer through "only" a year of bad/overpriced service? I bet it surprised you when the chancellor didn't give up his "temporary" emergency powers too.
Frank, you ignorant slut, a real free market would let you change suppliers if _you_ wanted to without waiting for the government's annual (maybe) poll of the collective's opinion on whether or not the one-size-fits-all supplier that lobbied hardest last time was acceptable.
You need a union to protect you from how bad of a boss the government is. And in the next sentence, I'll propose that government gets involved in X because government is good, you see.
The good news: all that trash means the people of FREEdonia still have food to eat, at least for now.
Looks like my old neighborhood in manassas park, va. Massive overcrowding in the neighborhood that the city did jack shit about. They just kept telling us that the dumpsters were sufficient for how the neighborhood was zoned. Most people lived 10+ to a house for a hood that was zoned for homes with an occupancy of 3 or 4. Thank you GOD I'm out of that shit hole town now. The illegals and section 8 losers can have it.
If the trashman stopped picking up my trash, I'd start driving it to the dump every two weeks. Honestly, oh well, what can you do? Guess we'll just live in trash. As if they are all employed and just too busy to pick things up.
Strike continues because workers will lose 43% of their salary (NOW, 1,000€, about $1,300) That's totally inacceptable.
Strike continues because workers will lose 43% of their salary (NOW, 1,000€, about $1,300) That's totally inacceptable.
I agree. I wonder if the government heads are taking a haircut..Do pigs look better with lipstick on?
Last year's vacation spot (I love this place): http://bigstory.ap.org/article/chile-issues-health-alert-over-trash
This year's vacation spot: Madrid
Maybe it is me?
Funny! but not to worry. It's not you. It's because the city mayor has not been elected by the citizens, but by his husband Aznar (former PM of Spain) and she's a complete iliterate.
Guy in the third picture has the right idea...citizens should get together and have trash burning parties...a little Sambuca, a little fire...what could go wrong...
Here's an idea. Drive your own garbage to the fucking dump! Why doesn't some freelance citizen drive around with an old pick up and haul peoples garbage to the dump for $5 a bag or what ever is profitable.
Because all of these "conservative" officials have a special friend who wants to profit from mandates like garbage pickup, that's why.
I wonder if right wing idiots who scream and holler about the schools dumbing down this country ever look in a Goddamned mirror.
Chances are you can't even get to the dump, if you're not a truck from the public service racket.
Garbage makes my brain hurt.
This is why the government should have a monopoly over garbage collection. Otherwise, a private monopoly could take over and bad things would happen. *NOSEBLEED FROM COGNITIVE DISSONANCE*
so Spain is not Uganda?
Speaking of taking out the trash: House Republicans introduce resolution to impeach Attorney General Holder
What idiots. Just fire the garbage men and hire new ones. I'm sure that there are plenty of people looking for work.