Polarisation intensifies
ON Thursday 27 January, Spanish industry was shut down by a general strike. Almost all of the country's three million industrial workers
International Viewpoint #254 March 1994 responded to the trade union call.
lists, students and youth, tenants, consumers associations, anti-poverty collectives, Christian community organısations, the liberal professions, musicians and artists, and so on. These forces pro-
JOAQUIN NIETO - Madrid, 3 February 1994
A FEW trains and buses
were running in the big cities as a result of the government's decree in favour of minimum service, but passengers were few and far between. Over the morning, the strike spread to other sectors. In general, educational institutions remained empty and press kiosks were closed. There were no newspapers, as the previous evening's strike by workers in the daily press was a clear success. Offices were half-closed, with a few non-striking employees remaining in empty buildings, such as in the big shopping centres.
A significant number of small businesses joined the shut down. In rural areas, farmers worked, but not agricultural labourers who went on strike, as did workers in the schools and municipal services. In the industrial suburbs and those areas most affected by the crisis and by de-industrialisation (such as the northwest), the strike was total. The central core of the big cities took on a festive air, aside from the characteristic tension of such a day of struggle. In the afternoon, one million and a half demonstrators took to the streets in over a hundred cities and towns.
### Tense
This was the fourth general strike in less than four years. This strike was without a doubt the most tense and the most difficult one. The call for a general strike came in the midst of a terrible crisis, with more than twenty-three percent of the active population unemployed and forty percent lacking job security.
The effects of this situation were mixed. For some, it was a stimulus towards combativity; for others, it induced fear and paralysis. The strike, which came only a few months after the 1993 election, met an active anti-strike campaign - not only from the government but also from other political forces, in 12 particular the rightwing People's Party and the rightwing Basque and Catalan nationalists.
The counter-reform of the labour code that led to the strike was approved by ninety-two percent of parliamentary deputies. Only the United Left (TU) supported the general strike. Employers, for their part, who are very attached to this made to measure reform, organised an active campaign against the strike which included personal threats. Public and private media treated the strike call as something that concerned them directly, and unleashed a campaign to influence public opinion against it, through a barrage of commentaries and pieces in the press.
It is perhaps because there are so many difficulties that this mobilisation was more highly valued than previous ones, and more militant. In the days leading up to the strike, tens of thousands of trade union activists participated in picket lines and in brigades organised to popularise the strike call.
"Normal"
There were hundreds of arrests, tens of injured and one death (a striker run over by a car). This is the balance sheet of a day characterised as "normal" by the press. The vitality of the trade union movement depends directly on the activity of tens of thousands of trade union activists. Without them, the strike would not have been possible.
The other feature of the day was the profound class division it provoked in Spanish society. On the one hand, there were all the establishment forces: the business community, ninety-two percent of deputies and their parties, the central and autonomous governments, the mass media, and so on. On the other hand, there was the great majority of working people, the trade unions, supported by an enormous range of social organisations and collectives - environmentaduced a huge quantity of manifestos and petitions in support of the strike.
While this is not the first time that such a division has existed, on this occasion the polarisation was probably more intense. What consequences will this have for the future? It is actually quite hard to say. There is still a wide gap between the social and electoral behaviour
IU was the only parliamentary force that supported the strike. And it did so actively. Will it be able to become the political reference point for all the individuals and organisations that mobilised? Will it succeed in winning over this electorate? A significative decline in PSOE votes and an increase in IU votes in the June elections would be positive
Failings
Alternatively, either the PSOE will succeed in legitimising its policies once again - as has already happened on several occasions — or only the rightwing will benefit from its failings.
As for immediate perspectives, the general strike revealed two things. Firstly, that there is a rejection of the conter-reform of the labour code, which would open the way to collective redundancies through the elimination of the need for administrative authorisation. The counter-reform also opens the way to apprenticeship contracts that allows employers to hire youth at $350 per month without access to social security
Secondly, there is the demand for the government to sit down and negotiate the reform with the trade unions. For the time being, the government is still in post-strike mode and is careful not to admit that it was a success. It is refusing to negotiate, and says that the reform is already under discussion in parliament. It says that secondary reforms (if there are any) can only be made in parliament.
There will surely be some amendments. The only question is how wide-ranging they will be.*
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International Viewpoint #254 March 1994