Taxi strikes possible at Malaga Airport

Taxi drivers from Malaga city will strike for two hours every Tuesday at the airport and the rest of the city. They also plan daylong strikes during December 24th, 31st and January 5th as protest, since a solution could not be found regarding sharing of taxi transfer clients at Malaga airport with the rest of the provincial Taxi drivers. The strikes will continue until next summer unless local government sends a positive answer.

In fact, the Taxi drivers of Malaga City will convene another assembly in January to finalise the strike schedule until summer. This schedule may well call for strikes over the Holy Week holiday and the August Fair.

The agreement was reached by about one hundred Taxi drivers after a meeting that lasted nearly four and a half hours. Taxi drivers from the city still require the compliance of the Ministry of Public Works and Housing of the agreements reached last February. These agreements would allow the implementation of the principle of “modulated reciprocity” as a first step towards the creation of an area of joint operation in the area of influence of the airport.

Taxi drivers will communicate their decision to strike to central government representatives, so they can authorise the strikes. They hope to start the demonstrations in mid-October. To begin with, Taxi services will stop both at the airport and the rest of the city on Tuesdays, from 10 AM to noon. They will demonstrate at the airport and in front of the Junta de Andalusia Delegation of Public Works and Housing.

The partial strike will take place from October to Christmas time, and then they plan on striking for twenty-four hours all over the city on December 24th and 31st and January 5th.  “Modulated reciprocity”, if implemented for a period of two years and revised after this period would allow Taxi drivers from the city to pick up customers in towns where Taxi drivers take customers to either the airport, the seaport or the railway station María Zambrano. Aside from the immediate implementation of this principle, Taxi drivers also demand to get a specific date for the start of another of the resolutions that were adopted regarding the control of pre-arranged hiring system via a registration system placed at the airport access points to gain entry to the only space authorised for Taxis lending this type of transfer service.