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Spain Labor Relations in the Franco Era
Labor relations until the late 1950s were generally of
a
fascist, authoritarian type. Wages and working conditions
were
set by decrees issued by the government, and all wage
earners
were required to be members of the government body, the
Spanish
Syndical Organization (Organizacion Sindical
Espanola--OSE).
Collective bargaining, independent labor organizations,
and
strikes were prohibited. In conjunction with the general
economic
liberalization of the late 1950s, the 1958 Collective
Bargaining
Law (Ley de Convenios Colectivos) for the first time
permitted
limited local collective bargaining between employers and
labor
within the framework of the OSE.
Despite police repression and the heavy penalties that
were
given to striking workers--striking was considered the
equivalent
of a treasonable offense--there were a number of labor
conflicts
during the 1950s, especially in Barcelona and in the
Basque
region, both pre-Civil War trade-union strongholds.
Through harsh
police measures and the imprisonment of workers, these
conflicts
were readily brought under control. They were, however,
harbingers of a tidal wave of labor unrest that was to
inundate
the country during the late 1960s and the early 1970s.
As workers and their clandestine labor organizations
grew
more assertive during the mid-1960s, they sought a larger
share
of the country's growing prosperity. An oppositional
grass-roots
labor movement, which became known as the Workers'
Commissions
(Comisiones Obreras--CCOO), arose within the official
labor
organization. During the 1960s and 1970s, the CCOO became
the
principal opposition to government-controlled labor
organizations. The CCOO had links to the Roman Catholic
Church,
which during the same period was undergoing a growing
liberalization with the encouragement of Pope John XXIII
and Pope
Paul VI. The church dissociated itself from the Franco
regime,
and it championed Spanish trade union freedoms and
collective
bargaining rights. Some church-sponsored labor groups were
permitted to operate openly, most notably the Catholic
Action
Workers' Brotherhood (Hermandad Obrera de Accion
Catolica--HOAC).
On July 24, 1968, the Bishops' Conference condemned
Spain's
government labor organizations and issued a call for free
trade
unions. Churches provided a sanctuary for striking workers
and
served as a refuge from the police.
Oppositional union groups became more active in
elections for
shop-level representatives. As slates of candidates
sponsored by
the CCOO and others increasingly won elections for factory
shop
stewards (jurados de empresa), the OSE became more
and
more dysfunctional. Meanwhile, the influence of the
Catholic
leadership of the CCOO lessened, as communists became
increasingly dominant and as the movement became more
active.
Labor unrest underwent an explosive expansion. There were
777
strikes in 1963, 484 in 1965, and the number mushroomed in
1970
to 1,595. The strikes resulted in major wage gains,
frequently
exceeding official guidelines.
Semiclandestine independent trade unions began to
emerge
during the final decade of the Franco regime. In addition
to the
CCOO, other groups began to make their presence felt. The
socialist General Union of Workers (Union General de
Trabajadores--UGT), historically, the labor arm of the
Spanish
Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Obrero
Espanol--
PSOE), belatedly emerged as a leading contender for worker
leadership. In the Basque region, the Basque Workers'
Solidarity
(Eusko Langilleen Alkartasuna-Solidaridad de Trabajadores
Vascos-
-ELA-STV), the labor adjunct of the Basque Nationalist
Party
(Partido Nacionalista Vasco--PNV), also made a
reappearance. In
addition, various organizations spawned by the church's
active
defense of workers' rights, the most notable being the
Workers'
Syndical Union (Union Sindical Obrera--USO), vied for
workers
support. The anarcho-syndicalist National Confederation of
Labor
(Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo--CNT), which had been
one of
the two dominant trade union centers before 1939,
reappeared
sporadically in post-Franco Spain as a tiny, marginal
force.
Data as of December 1988
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