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 responded to the trade union call.
JOAQUIN NIETO — Madrid, 3 February 1994
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 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 (IU) 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 - environmenta-
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International Viewpoint #254 March 1994 lists, students and youth, tenants, consumers associations, anti-poverty collectives, Christian community organisations, the liberal professions, musicians and artists, and so on. These forces produced 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 of the population.
1U 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 indicators.
### 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 counter-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 or health care.
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. *
Women work family "ECONOMIC CRISIS" and "crisis of the family". '. These are two dominant themes in the advanced capitalist countries today. In Western Europe governmental policies are attempting to "solve" both by tying them together, encouraging women to leave work and stay at home with their children, thus reducing unemployment statistics, cutting state spending on childcare and reinforcing the traditional family structure as the best framework for looking after children. Such policies have to take into account the social changes which have taken place over the last twenty-five years. Despite the economic crisis, all statistics show that women in Western Europe are continuing to enter the labour market by millions. Studies continually refer to their presence as "an irreversible, lasting, widespread reality" However, studies also show that this presence in the labour market takes particular forms. Women are massively present in the service sector, they are the vast majority of part-time workers and those working in other forms of "adjusted" work schedules such as "annual working hours" where work is concentrated at particular times of the year, fixed-term contracts, etc. For many women, taking such jobs is a result of the pressure they are under as individuals to find a way of combining responsibilities 3rd Euro for children with the the r necessity and wish to go and out to work. It is increasingly impossible for Paris, 2 families to live on a single income, more cindle inname more the provision of publicly-funded childcare. Another specific factor of women's place in the labour market is also their generally higher rate of unemployment. It is this combination of factors which makes women a particularly vulnerable target for governmental policies aiming to hide the true extent of unemployment and cut state spending. The offensive being waged on the "crisis of the family" has both ideological and economic aspects. The crisis of the family - by which is meant the drop in the number of marriages, the rise in the number of divorces and in the number of children born outside marriage — is held responsible for a general decline in "moral values" and particularly the rise of "juvenile delinquency". This is apparently the result of the lack of a "safe, secure, loving environment" and "appropriate role models" ' Thus governments are looking for policies that will force people into the nuclear family which apparently provides this - despite the reality of child abuse and violence against women within the family. The responsibility of governmental policies, which have led to increasing unemployment, rising poverty, homelessness, lack of good-quality childcare and over-crowded, under-funded schools, is conveniently forgotten. A strong underlying racism in much of this discourse on the family should be particularly highlighted. One of the most striking examples of this is the recent report on the family in France which openly talks of the "decline of our France" because of the drop in the birthrate. In fact, if immigrants' children are taken into account, the population is growing by 300,000 per year, the highest rate in Europe!? Nevertheless, the French right is leading the field in proposals of pro-natalist policies, that is policies designed to encourage ean Conference for
(French) women ght to abortion contraception to have more babies. 5-26-27 March. A particularly vicious attack on march.