About 200 of Spain's "indignant" activists rallied near the Spanish parliament Wednesday after camping out overnight to protest plans to overhaul workers' collective bargaining rights. Two rows of police vans and uniformed officers blocked access to the square in front of the central Madrid assembly.
Many of the demonstrators, who are protesting the country's economic crisis, high unemployment, benefit cuts and political corruption, spent the night in the street in sleeping bags stretched out on cardboard or in tents. Elsa Tobeno, a 45-year-old single mother who has been unemployed since she lost her job at a nursery four years ago, said she joined the rally in the morning because the government's labour reforms were "unjust".
"Everything the government does is against us. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer," she said, holding up a banner that read "Enough!". Parliament on Wednesday debated a proposed reform of the collective bargaining system, which was approved by Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's cabinet on June 10. The reform to the system, which includes industry-wide agreements that cannot be modified, reduces the period that a contract remains valid once it has expired.
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