MADRID, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- Workers at the Spanish banks that have been nationalized due to their financial problems, Bankia, NovacaixaGalicia and Banco de Valencia, on Monday announced strike action in protest at the sweeping jobs cuts in their institutions.
The strike will be held on Feb. 6 and will be accompanied by protests in the cities of Madrid, Valencia, Avila, Segovia, Las Palmas, Logrono and Barcelona on the coming Wednesday. Meanwhile there will also be partial stoppages in the three banks on Jan. 30.
The unions denounced the unwillingness of management to negotiate the number of job losses, which will add thousands of workers from the Spanish banking sector to the 5 million Spaniards already out of work.
"The managers of these banks have not done anything to try and reach an agreement to try and minimize the number of redundancies or to implement measures of internal flexibility," said General Secretary of the Comfia-CCOO, Jose Maria Mendez.
The unions argue it has been impossible to find an agreement which avoids "traumatic" measures, and warn that further restructuring of Spain's banking sector means that many workers who escape the current round of cutbacks may be affected in the future.
"There are no guarantees over the future of these entities or the workers who remain," said General Secretary of the Federation of Services and the UGT union, Jose Miguel Villa.
Bankia, which is the fourth biggest bank in Spain, had to be nationalized by the Spanish government last May as a result of its huge debts caused by overexposure to toxic assets in the housing sector.
Bankia received 18 billion euros (23.9 billion U.S. dollars) of European Union (EU) funds at the end of 2012 to add to the funds it received from the Spanish government in the second half of 2012.
It will be shedding 4,900 jobs, a figure which will rise to 6,000, while closing around 1,000 branches.
The unions are furious that the around of compensation these workers will receive is "very similar," to that received by the 50 company directors who have left the bank.
Meanwhile, NovacaixaGalicia is contemplating sacking all of its workers aged 50 or over, with around 2,500 jobs in total being lost.
The banks explain they have little options given that the conditions of their bailout, imposed by the Ordered Banking Restructuring Fund (FROB) on the insistence of the EU means they have no options other than to make sweeping reductions in staff and spending cuts.
This is the most real, most helpless and most motivate life expense of Beijing!
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