Below we publish two articles looking at the relations between the PSOE and the union and social movements. * Unions face PSOE "modernization" THE election victory of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) in October 1982 was greeted by much of the union movement, and obviously by the Socialist UGT union, with high hopes in the promises made during the campaign. JOAQUIN NIETO & PAULINO RODRIGUEZ ty, given the community of interests between the government and the right, now with a Socialist government in power, they believed things would be very ditferent. Underpinning this belief was the relation between the union and the "fraternal (Communist and Socialist) parties" which was essentially one of dependence. This dependence, however, has had a different effect on the two unions.
The CCOO's subjection to the various tactics adopted by the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) between 1976 and 1982, and, concretely, the successive social pacts signed "to help the consolidation of democracy" exacted a high price in terms of loss of membership; as a result the CCOO lost the preeminent position it had held at the start of the transition from the Francoist dictatorship.
UGT rides Socialist wave
For the UGT, on the other hand, the close links with the PSOE were key to its leap from being a marginal force in 1976 to becoming the leading union in terms of the number of delegates obtained in the union elections in 1982, just after the PSOE election victory.
Both the high hopes and the close political links were to be reversed in the first five years of the Socialist government.
It was already clear by the end of 1983 that the promised "left turn" was not being carried through, being completely alien to a government team which fully accepted the prevailing liberal economic orthodoxies. Their main priority was the carrying through of industrial reconversion postponed by rightwing governments lacking the necessary social support. Launched under the banner of the "modernization of the productive apparatus" time would show that this was nothing more than a huge operation of cutbacks and restoration of profitability involving a significant degree of dein- my Involving sigcant degree or deindustrialization of the Spanish economy.
1986 1990
66,411 99,737
56,065 87,730
5,372 7,488 1,062 3,527
22,393 16,903
10,833 8,407
162,298 237,261
T HESE hopes involved both the improvement of workers' conditions and the role of the unions in society including their shility to influen moul lio their ability to influence public policy making.
An expression of these expectations was the rapid achievement of the InterConfederation Agreement (AI) for 1983 between the UGT, the CCOO (Workers Commissions - close to the Communist Party) and the bosses without direct government participation.
One reason for the ease with which agreement was reached was the practice that the unions had accumulated over preceding years in making social agreements. However another factor was that, for the first time in several years, the government of the day made no attempt 6 1983 and had permised a reduction on to insert a reference to wage rises for the legal working week to 40 hours.
The unions' thinking was dominated by one big idea: until then the unions had taken part in such tripartite negotiations from a clear situation of inferiori-
1982
UGT 51,672
CC.00 47,016
ELA-STV 4,642 INTG-CIG 1,651
OTHERS 18,765
GRUPO TRAB. 17,024 TOTAL 140,760
International Viewpoint # 240 • December 7, 1992
Union election results
Union election results
SPANISH STATE
At the same time, it became clear that the policy was to reduce job security and demarcation as far as possible; this was expressed in a series of decrees signed in 1984 dealing with such matters as reductions in social security, including a reform of the pension system which took effect two years later.
The first distancing from government policy and the first critical reactions came from the CCOO. The failure of the PCE in the 1982 elections and its subsequent disintegration meant that the union, not wanting to share the party's decline, took an increasingly independent stance.
Furthermore, the splits in the PCE, especially the one that gave rise to the Communist People's Party of Spain (PCPE), meant increased pluralism in the CCOO, increased influence for radical views, previously restricted to the somewhat closed circles of the Union Left (Izquierda Sindical — IS).
At the time, the CCOO started an ongoing campaign of opposition to government policy. Its attitude to the industrial reconversion was ambivalent - with elements both of opposition and acceptance — expressed in a policy mainly aimed at negotiating a softening of the traumatic effects of closures.
Meanwhile, the CCOO made the significant gesture of refusing to sign the Economic and Social Agreement (AES) alongside the government, the employers' organization and the UGT.1 It also opposed the decrees lessening job security which the government approved with the blessing of the UGT.
The most significant expression of CCOO opposition to government policy, however, was the calling of a general strike on June 20, 1985 against the pension reform. However, the CCOO's opposition was conducted within strict limits.
The UGT, meanwhile, for the first five years of the Socialist government, opted for support for government policy, providing, indeed, its main source of social endorsement.
The UGT explicitly supported the government's industrial reconversion policy. The signing of the AES could only be interpreted as a statement of backing for a government policy which implied big attacks on broad sectors of the working class.2
Another aspect of the UGT's supportive attitude to the PSOE government was highly relevant; the desire to outstrip the CCOO and become the country's main union force. This ambition rested on apparently reasonable assumptions: firstly, the possibility of translating electoral support for PSOE into members for the UGT — meaning a substantial crossover from the CCOO; secondly, the impact of the profound disarray in the PCE on the CCOO, and finally, the existence of effective support from the government for the UGT's pretensions.
1984-86 saw the highest level of confrontation between the two big union confederations since the start of the transition. Attacks succeeded one another and always in the same direction, by the UGT on the CCOO.
The first insistently repeated that the latter was a "Communist union" driven by a "belligerent attitude to the Socialist government that was never shown to the previous rightwing governments." The CCOO was accused of being "incapable of negotiation" and "indifferent to the interests of the workers owing to its anti-Socialist sectarianism".
In this respect, the AES was of crucial importance in the UGT's strategy; the exclusion of the CCOO from the collective negotiations was meant to pave the way for the proposed objective.
Evaporation of illusions
There are two specially interesting facts that are relevant here. The first was the considerable success (in the circumstances) of the June 20, 1985 general strike called by the CCOO. This took place at a time when the anti-NATO movement was at its height. The social climate was marked by the evaporation of illusions in the PSOE's promises and growing opposition to various aspects of government policy.
The second was the results of the union elections in 1986. While this showed both a relative and absolute strengthening of the UGT - which increased its lead over the CCOO by three percent - it did not bear out the UGT's expectations for the collapse of its rival and the establishment of its primacy. At the same time the UGT's majority was overshadowed by evidence of widespread electoral fraud in smaller enterprises and the fact that the CCOO still came out in front in the larger enterprises.
In 1982, the UGT got 36.74% of the total number of delegates, and the CCOO 33.33%; in 1986 the respective figures were 40.92% and 34.49%. In 1990 they were 41.62% and 36.98%.3 1. What the AES was all about was well expressed by Felipe Gonzalez himself, who explained before the negotiations: "I am asking for the same sacrifices for my government as those made for the previous rightwing governments" 2. The AES capped the collective negotiations for 1985 and 1986. Most of the conventions were to have effect over two years with provisions for wage revision in the second year. Many of the conventions were "of limited scope" , signed only by the employers and the UGT although in practice they were often of wider validity. 3. The figures are interesting from a number of points of view. On the one hand they show the increasing concentration of union influence in the hands of the CCOO and UGT. The total of delegates from these two big confederations rose from 70% in 1982 to 78% in 1990. Most of the gains were at the expense of smaller unions and the so-called "workers' groups"
Annual growth of Gross National Product
(adjusted for inflation)
1991
1989
1990
1986
1987
1988
4,42%
5,04%
4,41%
3,11%
5,48%
6,30% kers' groups"
On the other, we find a different development in Euskadi (the Basque Country) and Galicia. In the first case, the nationalist ELA-STV has become the leading union in the Basque autonomous community while in Galicia, the INTG-CIG made a big step forward in 1990, obtaining 23.9% of Galician delegates.
SPANISH STATE
The 1986 figures are the background of the changes that took place in the union world and in union/government relations in 1987.
At the centre of these changes was the split between the PSOE and the UGT and the adoption by the latter of a policy of opposition to government policy along with a tendency towards united action by the unions in place of their previous confrontation.
Apart from the results of the 1986 union elections, the change in the economic cycle played a crucial part in these developments. 1986 saw the start of a long period of expansion which lasted until 1991 (see table). The change in the economic situation did not however mean a change in the government's economic policies; these remained firmly based on monetarist and neo-liberal principles and were profoundly antisocial.
Pressure continued on the workers, said to be the main culprits for inflation and job security continued to be undermined. State expenditure continued to be squeezed while unemployment fell only slightly to remain at a very high level.
The new period of relative economic prosperity was favourable to sudden -and scandalous - enrichment in some quarters and a growth in social inequality. Union proposals for a change in government policy, meanwhile, were bluntly rejected.
All these factors led to the reversal by the UGT of its long standing policy of close alliance with the PSOE, and the same factors were behind the general strike of December 14, 1988 which marked both the culmination and possibly the outer limit of the confrontation between the unions and the government.
Effects of 1988 general strike
The December 1988 strike made a big stir in a society unaccustomed since the start of the Transition to challenging authority — aside from the episode of the anti-NATO movement. The same event also saw the disappearance of the last remaining hopes for any positive social action from this government. People contemplated for the first time the possibility of a social movement that would fight directly for reforms by putvarious social forces that appear on the scene.
However, if the unions were to play such a role, they would have to work tirelessly to develop a social culture of militant opposition to the authorities, of a measure of control over representatives in elected bodies and involvement in organized mobilizations within civil society. Such tasks were beyond the union leaders.
The raising of demands for a "social change" and the struggle to compel such a change soon gave way to the union leaders' obsession with controlling the effects of the general strike. Eighteen months had to pass before that translated itself into a few concessions - such as negotiations over public sector pay that time has shown to be without content or of only short duration.
Meanwhile, the Socialist government gained the time needed to retake the initiative. Now, this has reached the point where, under the guise of meeting the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty on European union, a comprehensive antisocial programme is being pursued.
The half day general strike of May 28, 1992, called to oppose the latest government measures, was characterized more by the consequences of developments in the unions after the December 1988 strike than with the spirit of that earlier strike itself.
A brief episode of confrontation was succeeded by renewed efforts to limit the must brutal aspects of the measures without any challenge to their underlying logic. In this context, plans for social partnership schemes have flourished.
A rapid retrospective of the past decade can help us to see the pluses and minuses of the situation of the unions.
On the plus side is the passing of the confrontation between the two big confederations and, even more positive, the reality of unity in action. At the same time, this new ability to act has
Breakdown of national workforce* 1982 1990 Agriculture 7.65% 5.02% Industry/ been accompanied by greater centralization of decision making by the union leaderships to the detriment of rank- and-file participation.
It is also all to the good that the dependency on the "fraternal" parties has been much weakened and that the unions have acted independently. While the present situation can be reversed, this is a substantial change.
It is also the case that the past decade has seen real rises in the incomes of regularly employed workers covered by collective contracts, thanks to the rise in real wages since 1987. However, this advance has not been felt by less well situated workers, who have seen a 5% fall in the real minimum wage, not to speak of the legions of the unemployed.
As far as the attitude to other social movements and issues is concerned, the unions, and especially the CCOO, have started, with all kinds of hesitations, to address such questions as women's rights and defence of the environment.
It would also be reasonable to note the carving out by the unions of their space in society at least in terms of membership. This is even more true if we remember the strong pressure against unionism in recent years — especially in 1988-89.
Rise in CCOO membership
The CCOO saw a rise in membership of 34% between 1982 and 1990 (see table) This bulk of this growth was between 1988 and 1990, under the impact of the December 1988 general strike. At the same time, closer analysis of these affiliation points to some serious problems.
The whole of the CCOO's growth has been recorded in the service sector (where it has risen three times) and above all in the public sector, where affiliations have risen sevenfold. However membership in industry and construction has remained stagnant.
Breakdown of CCOO membership* 1982 1990 4.10% 3.13% ting intense and constant pressure on the authorities to affect its behaviour.
Trade unions take on a decisive importance from that point of view.
They are the only organizations capable 8 of taking the initiative in such a movement and giving expression to the
Construction
41.95% 38.42%
75.50%
59.74%
Services
50.40% 56.56%
14.03%
29.99%
Others
6.96%
---
7.19%
* proportion of economically active population in each sector
* composition of CCOO membership according to sector
International Viewpoint # 240 • December 7. 1992
While it is true that employment in services has been growing much faster than in industry and construction, this latter sector has none the less registered a 10% growth.
The CCOO's growth patterns are explained first of all by the entry into full-time employment in the public sector of a large number of relatively young people and by the new forms of union representation, and to some extent negotiation, in the public sector. The stagnation in industry and construction reflects a decline in big enterprises in favour of small and medium sized firms and the spread of insecure jobs which are hard to unionize.
It also has to be said that, at least in the case of the CCOO, the process of affiliation has become much more passive and the union itself more bureaucratized, while both the UGT and the CCOO have become increasingly financially dependent on public investment schemes, which weighs in the balance against their mounting any sustained challenge to the authorities.
The unions have not been able to hold back - not to speak of reversing — the tendency for the share of profits in the Gross Domestic Product to rise at the expense of wages. In 1982, the latter was 51.3% of GDP and profits 44.4%; in 1991 the percentages were 45.9% and 46.1% respectively.
### Unions suffer striking defeat
In the same way, they have failed to halt the dizzying advance in insecure jobs.4 Life has not been made easier by the fact that, in its time, the UGT formally agreed to the legislation undermining job security. Overall, the unions have suffered a striking defeat in their stated aim of reducing the social inequalities accumulated over recent years.
But the most basic defeat, which involves all the others, is the failure to obtain a serious change in government policy. This is not because its efforts have not been crowned by success, but because the necessary perseverance has not been there in pursuing the proclaimed objective.* 4. According to Ministry of Labour statistics on employment, 94.6% of contracts registered in 1991 involved various types of insecure working. Statistics worked out by Eurostat for 1989 (since which time things have worsened) put the Spanish State in first place in Europe for insecure employment. They show 30% of such jobs to 70% permanent posts. Next in line is Portugal with 13% and 81% respectively.
SPANISH STATE Building communities of resistance IN 1982, the PSOE appeared to many social movement activists as a possible ally, especially around three questions: leaving NATO, winning a woman's right to abortion and changing the thrust of the National Energy Plan.
MANUEL GARÍ
HE electoral victory soon provoked new tensions inside the movements, around questions such as the initial proposals for an abortion law, the nuclear moratorium of 1984, the co-opting of feminists onto the Women's Institute, the creation of new government departments dealing with the environment, and the delay in dealing with membership in the Atlantic Alliance.
This conflict would be centred on the relationship developed by the Socialist government — or, rather, by its supporters in municipal and autonomous governments - with the social movements that flourished in the big cities, especially those "new social movements" that exist as separate entities alongside the trade union movement, the nationalist movements and the international solidarity organizations.
For the far-left, whose growth occurred outside the institutions, the growth and evolution of the social movements through the 1980s has been and continues to be of great interest, insofar as these movements have provided an important challenge to the government's programme. This has been an ideological and ethical challenge as well as a practical challenge (campaigns, struggles) which has created space for political activity outside the institutions — the revolutionary left has thus increased its ability to take political initiatives, to mobilize and to establish close links with a wide array of social forces.
From a wider strategic view, it is necessary for proponents of a revolutionary alternative to make a detailed analysis of the evolution of the social movements and the autonomous popular organizations — for they represent the embryo of a civil society with its own voice representing a new majority in society, without which any project of social transformation is simply unviable.
The victory of the left in the 1979 municipal elections, and the PSOE-PCE (Communist Party of Spain) alliance, led to the demobilization of those forces which until then had constituted the principal nontrade union urban social movement. Institutional work replaced mass work, and soon came into open conflict with it. A large number of local activists became involved with the running of local administrations in place of their grassroots community activities. In 1983, the PSOE once again took an interest in the popular associations, with the aim of converting them into mouthpieces for its institutional work in society. Now the PSOE has a majority in the Confederation of Local Associations of Spain (CAVE), and it has reduced the role of the associations to that of consultation with no real participation - mediating the application of the Law on Local Governments and regulating municipal decrees flowing from this law.
On the other hand, abandoning all socialist policies in the area of land and public housing, the PSOE has empowered the associations, along with the trade unions, to enter directly into the real estate market to create and manage cooperatives — while depriving them of any activist function or limiting them to issues which do not come into conflict with the government (campaigns against drugs and for public security, and so forth). Moreover, given the local associations' real poverty, the PSOE has made them depend for their survival on the subsidies from the various administrations.
### Marginalizing feminist activism
Before 1982 the PSOE was not interested in the women's movement, neither through its work as a party nor in its political programme. It only gave into pressures of the movement around a few questions relating to the Statute on Workers and the Constitution. After the formation of its government and during its ten-year tenure it has tried to develop an institutional feminism (supported by the media) and, through subsidies, nurture a kind of nonconflictual association — thus marginali- 9 Tino feminict activism zing feminist activism.
December 7, 1992 •
SPANISH STATE
The creation of the Women's Institute (with little executive power and concerned mainly with the production of studies and the creation of new women's associations), the obligatory implementation of the directives and community accords that made up the Equality and Positive Action Plans, and a certain amount of financing from the municipalities and communities — all these reflected the implicit recognition that the women's movement was able to achieve. The governmental initiatives were intended to absorb or neutralize this movement.
### Weakening fabric of social movement
The same association policy, which has some positive aspects insofar as it extends the organization of women, seeks to weaken the fabric of the social movement and see to it that it does not grow and come into conflict with the government's social and economic policy. It seeks to create, on one hand, an elite feminism and, on the other, its mass version, a vague controlled and elementary feminism.
There are two reasons why the feminist movement was able to resist the Socialist's policy. On one hand, there was the weakness of the law on abortion, which was limited to mere de-criminalization. On the other hand, there was the ongoing selfaffirmation of the autonomous movement - against the government's discriminatory policies - through its own campaigns and debates.
The limits of the government's policies became clear: a highly underdeveloped network of social services (as much in healthcare compensation for abortion as in the shelters for battered women and the literacy and cultural campaigns); limited legislation after 1986 in the area of violence against women and for the reform of the penal code on abortion; growth of insecure and part-time employment for women workers; and considering as a gain for the entire society those measures which only an agreement with the right, which it made a privileged interlocutor in 1987. It also worked with the newly-born Greenpeace until 1983 around the question of dumping nuclear waste in the seas.
The development boom of 1985 created a divide between the government and the radical ecology movement and organizations such as CODA and Greenpeace — which up to that point had been on good terms with the government. The talk of modernization, the aggressive policies around infrastructural and industrial development - showing no respect for natural spaces in Riaño, Anchuras and Cabañeros - jolted a large part of the movement back into autonomous organizing.
The radical wing, represented by organizations such as AEDENAT, grew in strength and widened its alliances to include "conservationists" around socio-political themes such as urban pollution, transportation, the energy question, the garbage problem and the question of what attitude to take into the Rio Forum - which provided a wide audience for its criticisms of the European Communities weak-kneed recommendations and the effects of the Maastricht Treaty.
Currently, the Spanish State is the worst environmental offender in the European Economic Community. A good measure of the attitude of the PSOE towards the environmental movement is found in the proclamations of the Secretary of State for Water and the Environment, Vincent Albero — who warns of the dangers of "ecological radicalism and fundamentalism."
After the electoral promise to hold a referendum on NATO membership, and the alliance between the peace movement and the PSOE - expressed in the Act of November 15, 1981 — the October 1984 government declaration and the PSOE congress two months later led to open conflict with the peace movement, thus beginning the decline of peace organizations with links to the PSOE
Described as the final battle of the transition period, the issue of the Atlantic
Alliance gave the peace movement centre stage, and it was joined by a wide array of forces in an intensely political conflict. When pressure in the streets surpassed that exerted by the military, Felipe Gonzalez was obliged to organize a referendum and the movement took on an openly anti-NATO and anti-government character that politicized the general atmosphere and enabled radical anti-militarists and the far-left to get a huge audience.
One of the results of the referendum was that the demand for participatory democracy was headed off by a plebiscitary form that the government put forward - with the resultant frustration of the more conscious elements of the society driving them into the ranks of what has been called "the new political abstentionism"
After the referendum, the expectations created in 1982 came to an end - a wide gap formed between the ensemble of social movements and the government; and new forms of political action emerged (during the student movement of 1986-87 and the general strike of 1988), including an anti-war culture that was able to express itself once again during the Gulf War.
### Civil disobedience
But it also had a more far-reaching effect, much to the dismay of the government - the growth in forms of civil disobedience around questions of defense and security. The most developed form this took was conscientious objection, and then insubordination, among youth.
The anti-militarist movement against the 1984 Law on Conscientious Objection, the rejection of sentences passed down by the Constitutional Tribunal in accordance with this law and opposition to the 1988 Regulation on Social Benefits — all these forced the government to give amnesty to thousands of objectors and introduce a new Law on Military Service in 1991.
The government hopes to de-legitimize a movement which has gained wide support and an undeniable social and moral legitiapplied inside the PSOE - such as happened with the "women's quotas".
The environmental movement, which had grown on its own both in the big cities and in the countryside, suffered its first blow in 1982, leading to the entry of a large part of its activists into the Socialist administration. The second blow came with the PSOE's ambiguous stance on nuclear energy, after the adoption of the moratorium.
The Socialists failed in their attempt to create their own associations, but not in its drive to attract a large part of the "conservationist sector, which criticized certain measures but took the PSOE as its political 10 reference point. The government came to
OTAN NO erreferendum orain bases tuera
International Viewpoint # 240 • December 7, 1992
macy. Government policy has been to suppress, divide and isolate the movement; when unable to do this, it has resorted to repression through the courts. The intransigence of the objectors and the general unpopularity of military service forced the government to free the Armed Forces from the work of judging the objectors in their tribunals — in order to prevent them from becoming further discredited. This produced tremendous confusion among civil judges when their turn came to apply the full repressive weight of the Law.
Before taking office, the PSOE showed little interest in the social movements, and when it did it was primarily concerned with harnessing their vote-getting potential. Its 1982 electoral platform reflected this superficial self-interested approach.
### Party and society
For the party leadership and intellectuals, civil society was only sufficiently developed to allow the citizenry to express its institutional preferences through mediators and through elections. Some Socialists even went so far as to identify the re-building of the PSOE and the UGT union confederation as a prerequisite for the building of a new civil society - confusing the needs of the old social-democratic project with the needs of society as a whole.