2 January 2015
There was no taxi strike in Malaga on Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and there will not be any on the Eve of the Epiphany. The taxi drivers group agreed to call off the strikes after a meeting held on Tuesday in Seville with governmental authorities.
The decision to call off the strikes planned was a result of the written agreement to publish before summer 2015 the decree that will allow the principle of “modulated reciprocity” to come into effect. This will allow taxis from Malaga city to pick up, under a pre-arranged contract, customers bound for the airport, the port or María Zambrano train station, who are traveling from other areas of the Province of Malaga.
According to José Antonio Mate, Member of the Commission of the Decree passed in November 1985 and president of the Unified Association of Independent Cab Drivers of Malaga, “we went to the meeting to obtain a date for the publication of the decree, and after a tug of war, finally, we got a deadline”. He stressed that the taxi drivers in the city are “prudent” and would call the strike off because “we have never wanted to impact the clients”. He pointed out that the Board’s commitment to this decree would come to fruition on January 14th, at the Taxi Council of Andalucía. From then on, and as a requisite for its publication, a series of reports from various Boards’ departments will have to be published. That is the reason why the Department of Development “can’t give a specific date for the decree’s enactment, but it will be at some point before the summer.”
In response to this situation, the representative of the negotiating committee has warned that cab drivers in the city of Málaga will watch closely as each legal step necessary for the enactment of the decree is taken. The new decree will likely put an end to the conflict with drivers from other towns by sharing, particularly at Malaga airport. The principle is a previous step to the creation of a joint provision area across the influence area of the airport, which will be implemented over the next two years.
