THOUSANDS of Spanish workers took part in a rally in Madrid on 5 July, to protest at the arrest and possible imprisonment of several hundred workers for taking part in strike action.
The rally, under the slogan ‘To Strike is not a Crime: We will not be silent’ was addressed by ITUC President Joao Felicio, along with Ignacio Toxo and Cándido Méndez, Presidents of the ITUC affiliates CCOO and UGT respectively.
Criticising the Spanish government’s alliance with employers, Felicio said that it was trying to make workers pay the costs of the economic crisis.
‘The right to strike is a human right, which cannot be struck down by any government,’ he stated.
‘The government’s actions break with decades of respect for the right to strike since the end of the Franco dictatorship.
‘Spain’s working people have the full support of the international trade union movement,’ said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.
Spanish prosecutors are initiating cases against 260 workers who have taken part in recent strike actions. Dozens of them are threatened with prison sentences totalling some 120 years.
With nearly 300 workers in court over their participation in strikes, Spain’s major unions – the UGT and CCOO – are fighting back, launching a campaign against what they call the increasing ‘criminalisation’ of strikes and other labour activities.
At least 260 workers across Spain are facing cumulative jail time of 120 years over their participation in recent labour activities, said Cándido Méndez of the UGT general workers’ union.
Threatened sentences range from fines to three years in jail. The move is set against a backdrop of a recent labour law reform that made it cheaper and easier for companies to lay off people, reduce wages and modify the conditions of employment. It’s creating a dynamic in which the clear aim is to discourage workers from mobilising,’ Méndez said.
Prosecutors are exploiting an obscure article in the criminal code meant to prevent workers from being pressured into striking, said Ignacio Fernández Toxo, who heads the Workers’ Commission trade union.
The article is being increasingly relied on to justify fines and time in jail for those who strike.
The result, he said, was chilling. They’re trying to make examples of a few, instil fear and discourage people from participating in mobilisations and strikes.
‘We’re talking about a fundamental right that’s enshrined in the Spanish constitution.’
As part of the campaign, letters are being sent out and meetings planned with prosecutors and government officials.
Rallies are also being organised across Spain all this week.
The issue takes on particular importance, said Toxo, when Spain’s recent history is factored in, referring to the Franco period of fascist dictatorship which lasted from 1939 until the dictator’s death in 1975.
”His repression was characterised by concentration camps, forced labour and executions, and he had the support of the Spanish monarchy.
‘It was not that long ago that Spanish workers lacked the freedoms to claim their rights as workers, he pointed out. We thought we had clearly overcome this phase in Spain. But it seems like maybe not.’
With nearly 300 workers in court over their participation in strikes, Spain’s major unions are fighting back, launching a campaign against what they call the increasing ‘criminalisation’ of strikes and other labour activities.
The Secretary General of UGT, Cándido Méndez, said ‘There are nearly 300 union members subject to prosecution for exercising their right to strike, some threatened with prison.
‘It is the entire working class of our country which is threatened,’ he remarked, adding that in Spain the right to strike is a fundamental right.
‘The right to strike is recognised by our Constitution and to try to amputate the exercise of this right does not only affect freedom of association, but the actual content of the Spanish Constitution.
‘This is a Constitution that the Government is reforming as a matter of fact and in very regressive terms, as they are cutting basic civil rights’.
Mendez was speaking at the joint rally, which was held in Madrid to protest against the criminalisation of ‘the right to strike’, and other union activities.
The rally was addressed by, among others, the president of the International Trade Union Confederation, Joao Antonio Felicio, the general secretaries of the UGT and CCOO, Cándido Méndez and Ignacio Fernández Toxo, the leaders of both unions in Madrid, José Ricardo Martínez and Jaime Cedrún and the general secretaries of UGT in Cantabria, Jesús Cedrún and CCOO Balearic, Katia Vincente.
UGT Secretary General Cándido Méndez said that the government was giving priority to a paragraph of the Criminal Code over the Spanish Constitution.
The unions are to meet with the Minister of Justice and Directors.
Mendez said there is an urgency to paralyse the threats of imminent imprisonment.
Finally, he warned that the Spanish government was using the crisis to cut rights and pointed out that the recovery is only for headlines and macroeconomic figures, but would not reach the reality of people.
Mendez added that Article 135 of the Constitution was a threat and treachery’, because the austeriry requires prioritising national debt repayments.
In 2007 there were 8,400 euros per capita debt attributable to each Spanish worker, today the figure is 21,000 euros.
‘How will you reconcile this with the defence of public services, with the real needs of the recovery’, he asked.
For its part, the General Secretary of UGT Cantabria, Jesús Cedrún, defended the union struggle because ‘rights were never given away always were conquered and conquering those rights and the reconquest of what we have lost is what we have to stick together for.’
