The fight of the Sagunto workers against industrial reconversion
In February 1983, two months after the installation of of the right had not been able to force through.
government's order in February 1983 government in the history of Spain - the new minister to extinguish Blast Furnace No. 2 at Sagunto was the of industry, Carlos Solchaga announced the decision to first step in closing this section of the complex. But it close part of the installations at the state-owned steel took a vear, until the end of March 1984, before this complex in Sagunto, a small port city near Valencia. decision could actually be carried out and the furnace
This decision provoked shock and indignation in the It was a year of struggle by 4,000 blast-
A few days after the announce- furnace workers and ment, they organized their first march on Madrid. All small city, a fight distinguished by a militant spirit, along this march, you could hear a shout that summed imagination and intelligence.
up the feelings of the Sagunto workers "Isidoro, what In this period, the battle at Sagunto was the dominkind of a change is this?" The pseudonym Felipe Gon- ating feature in the Spanish political situation. In parzalez used in the underground struggle against Franco ticular, it reflected very clearly the present strengths
And the main slogan of the Spanish and weaknesses of the workers movement. This ex-
SPANISH STATE.
Felipe Gonzalez's people of the city.
"socialist"
the whole population of this was "Isidoro."
Socialist Party, the PSOE, in the election campaign emplary mobilization ended, nonetheless, in the deteat
" This watchword managed to conof the workers, with two thirds of them voting to had been "change.
centrate all the illusions of the 10 million workers, accept an agreement signed by their leadership that confirmed the dismantling of the enterprise and the women and youth who gave Gonzalez an overwhelming majority on October 28, 1982.
loss of jobs involved.
It is essential to understand the reasons for the
It was during those days in February 1983 that the failure of this struggle, both to ensure that the lessons real meaning of the word "change" began to emerge.
The "Isidoro" of the fight against Francoism had be- of Sagunto will not be lost, and to counter the cynicism of the majority trade-union leaderships, which come Felipe Gonzalez, head of a government that had been elected by the workers but which was determined have dared to present the agreement they signed with to apply a capitalist policy that even the governments the government as a "victory."
Miguel ROMERO
The crisis that has hit Spanish industry is very deepgoing and still harder to resolve than in most other imperialist countries.
The well-known weaknesses of
Spanish capitalism - outdated technology, low productivity of labor and inadequate financial structures — have also been aggravated by the wildly exaggerated developmental plans undertaken by the last Francoist governments from 1974 up to the eve of the present international economic crisis.
To give just one example, the naval construction plans led to a situation where today 300,000 tons worth of ships, representing about half the shipbuilding potential of the country, cannot be sold.
And this is after two years in which half of the 20,000 workers in this industry have been in "job readjustment," that is, not working but getting
80% of their
"wage guarantee funds,"
last wage from with their job contracts remaining formally valid.
To grasp the breadth of the disaster that is hitting the shipbuilding industry, you have to consider that the PSOE government has set an annual production target as low as 250,000 tons for the coming four years.
Up until 1979, the crisis in industry developed in a molecular way, hitting essentially small plants, which closed by the thousands. It was a different story
10 in the big plants, where net employment rose slightly, by a total of about 5,000 workers.
The situation started to change after 1979. First of all, the political context shifted. The following were the main milestones: A constitution was approved. The Democratic Center Union (UCD) won the general elections in 'Don't close Sagunto!' (DR)
A. H.M.
CRiSiS
SAGUITO No
Union of Workers (UGT, the union confederation the PSOE dominates) veered sharply to the right, setting out on the road that has led them to their present positions. The decline of the workers movement accelerated.
But most important, the great bastions of the working class started to come under attack, and the traditional industries went into crisis. The masses responded immediately and in a united way. Despite its still fresh victory in the general elections, the right-wing government was unable to take on the workers in steel, shipbuilding and the producers' goods industry, where the forces of the working-class movement remained intact.
The UCD government sought to give its industrial policies a coherent form. In 1980, it got the so-called Bayon Law through parliament. (Bayon was the minister of industry at the time.) This was the first attempt to offer an overall cap. italist response to the industrial crisis.
This law also was met with firm resistance by the workers, but already the union leaderships were starting to sign very negative compromise agreements. And they managed to get the workers to accept these deals, although broad sections opposed them. Anyway, these agreements were real "compromise solutions" and seen as such by a lot of workers. Nowadays they are not uncommonly
International Viewpoint 18 June 1984
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regarded as belonging to "the good old administration, and were viewed with days." time were generally based on eliminating jobs by so-called painless methods (in the main through early retirement), as well as on massive financial aid to businesses in crisis. Theoretically, these subsidies were to enable the management to modernize. But in fact they went to pay compensation to the workers laid off and to meet the interest charges on the huge debts owed to the big banks.
The major banks, in fact, have often done very well out of the crisis. sufficient to point out that in industries undergoing reconversion, the average financial costs (loans and interest) borne by the enterprises amount to 20% of their sales and have grown at a rate of 30% a year.
The result of this policy was to put off the day of reckoning and make the situation worse. At the same time, not the slightest progress was made in industrial reconversion, except in textiles. Several thousand jobs were eliminated, but the workers affected were mainly nearing retirement age. There were no closures of industrial installations but to the contrary continual promises of new projects for immediate reindustrialization, promises that of course were never kept. The UCD government did not then have the necessary forces to go any further in carrying out an anti-working-class policy. The PSOE's broken promises
At the end of 1982, at the time of the general elections, it had become clear to everyone that the Bayon Law was dead letter. The question of how to solve the crisis was one of the central issues in the that the great majority of the workers thought that the "change" promised by the PSOE was a response to the industrial crisis radically different from the one of the right, that it would mean an end to layoffs and even the creation of new
Did not the PSOE promise to create 800,00 new jobs? Who among the masses of ordinary workers could think then that the PSOE would apply a policy still more brutal than that of the UCD?
During the election campaign, the PSOE fostered the illusion that it had a solution to the industrial crisis favorable to the workers. At the same time, it was careful not to make any concrete com-
Moreover, it was in crisisstruck regions that the PSOE got its best scores on October 28, 1982.
The first indication of the economic course the Felipe Gonzalez government was going to follow in practice was the of the ministers and top officials responsible for the public sector, in particular for the public enterprises hardest minister of the Miguel Boyer; and the new minister of industry, Carlos belonged to the right wing of the PSOE. They come from the top levels of public ermational Viewpoint 18 June 1984 suspicion even by the UGT apparatus. But the appointment of these people as ministers was not a surprise, since they
The real surprises were that the PSOE put such figures as Enrique Moya and Claudio Boada, who had long and "brilcareers behind them as servants of big capital, in charge of the public sector. Boada even held one of the highest economic posts under the Francoist dictator-
The PSOE's economic policy was in line with the records of the political ning, it has been, and remains, a capitalist policy applied with brutality and boundless arrogance. (1)
The PSOE's response to the industrial crisis — axing of jobs and eliminating unprofitable sectors - was quite up to the standards of the policies applied by the most reactionary governments of the imperialist bourgeoisie. ernment counted on the "market economy" and the "dynamism of the Spanish economy," as Felipe Gonzalez says, and the mythical "light at the end of the tunnel" to bring modernization of the Spanish economy and put Spain in the "leading group" of the imperialist coun
So, no one could be surprised when a few days after May Day this year, Felipe employers that "capitalism is the least bad system that exists." have come as a surprise to anyone either that in the same period Alfonso Escamez, the main boss of the leading Spanish private bank, the Banco Central, Whose role in financing coup d'etat operations remains murky, said: "The government's policy is the best possible." common chord between the PSOE gov-
The PSOE's concrete plan was first formualted in April 1983 in an appendix to the White Book on industrial reconversion. The central objectives have not changed since then, even though the tactics have evolved. The costs of this in jobs and public funds are cited in the box
The main instruments the to accomplish its plan are the classical ones known under other names in other countries in capital-
First of all, there are the "Employ-
Promotion Funds," workers rightly call "unemployment of-
Secondly, there are the Reindustrialization (ZURS), in which the establishment of industrial enterprises is to be promoted by subsidies, cheap credit, tax write-offs, and so forth. It should be noted that the PSOE's industrial reconversion has not provided for a single real, serious reindustrialization project. In reality, the government's only project, which is being touted as a bonanza, is setting up a European subsidiary of Disneyland in
So, the initial objective in the PSOE's industrial reconversion was shutting down the ore-treatment plant at Sagunto. The technical justification that was given for this measure has to be seen as essentially a coverup for what was a political choice. (3) The government's decision was first of all in line with accepting the production quotas set by the European Steel Commission. Secondly, it selected a weak link in the steel industry to start eliminating production facilities.
Which was the "weak link"? three integrated steel complexes in the Spanish state, the government chose first of all to maintain the one that belongs to the private Altos Hornos
Moreover, this complex is linked to the multinational American Steel will be the big gainer from the operation. Of the two public enterprises, Ensidesa (with 22,500 workers) was the biggest. A direct attack on it would provoke a real trauma throughout the Asturian region. More-
Ensidesa, which has already been hard hit by the crisis, is a bastion of the knew what to expect if it attacked it, and it had every reason to shrink from
So, finally, Sagunto was chosen as the victim because that is where the government expected the workers' resistance to be the weakest. The shutting down of the blast furnaces was to serve as an example of the government's firmness for the entire workers movement. It was to open up the way for applying harsher industrial reconversion measures rapidly and in all the other industries. But the workers and the whole city of Sagunto quickly showed the government that it had seriously underestimated
Sagunto steelworks, the Altos Hornos del Mediterraneo (AHM), emabout 4,000 workers, about 60% of whom were union members. This was much higher than the average rate of unionization today in the Spanish workers movement. The Workers Commis sions (CCOO), the union confederation linked to the Communist Party, were
And within the CCOO, the trade-union left linked to the so-called pro-Soviet currents in the CP
In addition, although in a minority, the UGT had significant representation.
Cf Inprecor (IV's French-language sister publication), No 163, December 19, 1983. 2. The Jobs Promotion Funds are a kind of unemployment benefit that lasts three years. The recent experience of these funds in the special-steel industry. where this system has been operating for two years, has shown the following results. About 5% of the workers concerned have found new jobs or been put in retraining programs. About 50%, completely demoralized, have withdrawn from these funds And the remaining 45% have found individual solutions.
Moreover, the government's decision did not respect the conclusions of the reposaki aadup for the government by the Kawasaki vice" company on the reconversion of the steel industry. It proposed not only maintaining the one treatment plant at Sagunto but to install a new rolling mill.
11
The crisis in figures
In March 1984, the number of unemployed was 2.8 million, or 21% of the econ
Only 30% of the unemployed receive any sort of bene-
And the anarchist CNT was also present.
The town of Sagunto was built around the steel industry. The shutting down of blast furnaces, the direct elimination of 2,200 jobs that was projected, would mean that it would become a ghost town, omically active population.
as the local people themselves said.
So,
Since the onset of the crisis, more than a million industrial jobs, out of a total of the entire city became involved in the
4 million, have been eliminated. At present, 830,000 workers are still working in fight at Sagunto to resist a decision made by the government of a party that held
According to the figures compiled by the UGT, industrial reconversion will an absolute electoral majority. It is no wipe out another 70,000 jobs directly, and indirectly, 250,000 jobs. More than a quarter of wage workers in industry will be hit.
accident that this struggle came to be
The total cost of industrial reconversion has been estimated at a trillion pesetas,
"Sagunto"
known under the name of that is, about 7 billion dollars. About 90% of the financing will come from public rather than that of the enterprise.
The trend in employment in steel is the following: In 1976, there were 47,282 jobs; in 1982, 37,500 and the projection for 1985 is 27,000. In 1982, the distribu-
A heroic struggle tion of steel jobs was as follows: 11,000 in AHV in Viscaya; 22,500 in the Ensidesa trust in Asturias; 4,000 in AHM in Sagunto.
I cannot go back over all the vicis-
The employment trend in shipbuilding was as follows: 1976, 50,000 jobs;
situdes of the struggle here. Suffice it to
1983, 43,000 jobs; projected for 1985, 23,000 jobs.
that it involved more than twenty say general strikes in the region, six or seven
Madrid and innumerable marches demonstrations.
It also involved clashes with the police, which led to tragedy last
December, when the cops opened fire with machine guns on one of these demonstrations.
During these 14 months of "trench warfare" between the people of Sagunto and the PSOE government, the working class resistance dug in beyond its defenses, with its own instruments, strengths and weaknesses, under the slogan of
"Sagunto will not be shut down!"
In the first weeks, the Sagunto struggle took on some confused features, which had the effect of disorienting the revolutionary vanguard.
On the one hand the right wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to gain a place in the mobilization, using the theme of "defend our steel industry against the PSOE government."
A certain populism thus showed up in the initial demonstrations, when the leadership kept out the banners, slogans and songs of the workers movement.
At the same time, stress was put on themes that involved competition between Sagunto and the other steel companies in the Spanish state.
For example, a feature of the strikers' propaganda was Sagunto should get the steel rolling mill rather-than Ensidesa.
This attitude obviously was encouraged by the right. And the government looked favorably on everything that might divide the steelworkers.
It should also be said that the majority union leaderships did nothing, either at AHV (in Viscaya) or at Ensidesa, during these 14 months to promote solidarity with the Sagunto struggle. Thus, they fostered the illusion among the workers in these enterprises that they were going to get off unscathed
However, these workers soon realized what a false sense of security this was.
This "populist" stage of the struggle did not last long.
But at the start, you had to know how to set your course in accordance with the essentially working- class dynamic of the mobilization and not be distracted by the ephemeral aspects it took on, owing to the demagogy of the right and the inexperience of those involved in the movement.
12 the metalworking industry.
funds.
Unity of the workers at the three steelworks had to be based on defending the legitimate right of those who worked and lived in Sagunto to save the industrial installations that provided them with work. On this basis, and not by invoking some abstract solidarity, you could, from within the struggle, correct the more dubious forms by which the workers and the people expressed their determination to resist, and combat the propaganda designed to foster a spirit of competiton among the three steel in any case, these problems quickly faded into the background. It was the formidable power of the struggle that came to the fore, and in particular the power of unity in this fight.
In the works, unity was based on a workers assembly that became almost a standing body, embracing both full-time and temporary workers. spread to the city, and gave rise to the organization of coordinating committees of women and youth. These committees played a central role in the mobilization, often more radical and more active than the workers organizations themselves.
Finally, there was unity in the leadership of the struggle. This was assured by the joint action of two bodies. One was the factory committee, which was elected at the time of the 1982 union elections. The other was a trade-union coordinating committee including representatives of the CCOO, the UGT, and the CNT. second had a decisive weight. There is no question but that this unity was key also created problems that appeared in the final phase of the struggle.
Thus, very diverse forms of struggle could be integrated into the mobilization. These methods, from the most elementary to the most radical, were continually combined. Some 700,000 signatures were collected on a solidarity petition. Pressure was brought to bear on the parliamentary institutions.
was brought And at the same time, the works was occupied, and a director of the enterprise "kidnapped," to use the term thrown around by the press, along with the head autonomous government of the Valencian country.
One of the methods of struggle detelligent use of an "alternative plan" to the government's plan. It was drawn up eral years of fighting capitalist industrial has made revolutionaries very mistrustful, and rightly so, of the tactical value of presenting counterplans to the proposals of the bosses or the government. These have been of two
"Socialist plans," which have had little usefulness in day-to-day agitation, and at best have been limited to propaganda work. (2) Proposals within the framework of trade-union "realism, and therefore inevitably accepting terms of reference most favorable to the bosses concerned about improving the competitiveness of enterprises and the productiv-
In fact, it is impossible to avoid dissecting the government's projects, even on the technical level, and showing the viability of the workers' proposals. You just have to keep your eye on the workers'
And the decisive and unyieldingly rigorous criterion has to be defending jobs and radical opposition to layoffs. This is what was done in Sagunto.
The workers drew up a plan and managed to present it in a clear way, showing that a relatively modest investment of 16 billion pesetas (a little over 100 million dollars) would make it possible to keep the threatened blast furnaces going on a profitable basis for the medium
It is true that it is easier to propose a counterplan in steel, for example, than in the shipbuilding industry. (4) In all cases, however, this poses difficult problems. 4. The shipyard workers drew up an alternative plan based on an intransigent defense of jobs. They demanded that a 750,000 tons production capacity be maintained. At the same time, they called for upholding the objective of winning 5% of the world market, the historical maximum attained by Spanish industry. But in this case, the function of the counterplan was pure propaganda, because how could you assure the sale of the ships built?
International Viewpoint 18 June 1984
Among them are questions of wages and working conditions, which are very often approached from the wrong standpoint of "sharing the sacrifices." Nonetheless, this is a field of battle that the trade-union left cannot avoid.
The need for solidarity with Sagunto was evident from the first, but the results in this area were not enough. You can understand the despairing statement of one of the leaders of the struggle shortly before it came to an end: "What can 4,000 workers do against 10 million votes?"
The strangest thing is that a struggle that an enormous sympathy, which was considered an example by the whole vanguard of the workers movement, got only mediocre solidarity outside the region around Sagunto. Building solidarity was certainly not an easy task, in view of the problems described above. But it was made more difficult by the fact that most of the industrial centers in the Spanish state had their own mobilizations. This was true in Asturias, Galicia, and in Viscaya in the shipbuilding industry. In Guipuzcoa, there was a mobilization in machine-tool and special steel, and in Navarra and Asturias in the mining industry. And it was hardly easy, on top of waging these struggles, to take on the task of solidarity with another struggle.
The main problem undoutedly was that solidarity with Sagunto should have been one of the components of a general program of mobilizing the working class against industrial reconversion, in which all the crisis-struck industries would have had their place. Obviously, the majority trade-union leaderships in the workers movement have done nothing serious in this regard.
But the trade-union left itself has failed to take initiatives. It is true that the solidarity enjoyed by the Sagunto struggle was organized by the CCOO, and in particular by the trade-union left, but it was less than could have and should have been done. International Viewpoint 18 June 1984
Finally, the most important lesson of Sagunto was the value of establishing the authority of the factory committee. From the first days, the workers refused to obey any other directives than the ones that come from the committee, which organized the various aspects of production. Not only were the orders to extinguish the famous Blast Furnace No. 2 rejected, but even demands for reducing production and other directives of this sort were ignored by the strikers.
It is because of this that the media talked about a "Sagunto soviet." It is symbolic also that when the struggle ended last March, the chairperson of the factory committee, Manuel called on one of the directors to give the order to lower the flame in the blast furnace to the minimum, the last stage before shutting it off. The political problem
Those 14 months of defying the authority of the government and the management of the enterprise are among the finest and most instructive pages in the history of the Spanish workers movement. Nonethless, this challenge was confined to resisting layoffs. consciousness of the workers, their understanding of their enemy's aims and the means that had to be employed to carry the fight through to a finish, remained at
The main weakness of the struggle at Sagunto thus lay in its relationship to the PSOE government. It is true that this was the most difficult problem, and it remains so today for the Spanish workers move-
In the enterprise in question, the UGT was the second biggest trade-union force, and the PSOE was the majority party in the town. But despite this, it was possible to wage a hard and long-drawn-out fight against the government. This was because the common objective more or less consciously held by the workers was to put pressure on the government, and they had the illusion that ultimately they would manage to make it listen to reason.
As the struggle advanced, the popular indignation grew, and the criticism of the government became harsher. In fact, the government's prestige suffered very badly in the country as a whole because of its attitude toward Sagunto. But the lack of an immediate alternative and the fact that the PSOE cabinet seemed to be the sole "left" government possible today in the Spanish state weighed quite heavily. This was especially true when people be. gan to realize that pressure would not be enough.
The notion that there is no other governmental alternative is played on by Felipe Gonzalez every time he talks to workers. The search for a political focus for the struggles was stymied, since there was no solution in the short run. It would demand a considerable effort for a section of the mass workers movement to assume the task of presenting an anticapitalist alternative to solve the crisis and to emerge as a sufficiently credible political pole of reference to the left of
In the short run, there is no perspective for anything more than struggles and actions. It is necessary to state forcefully, and convince the trade-union left, that it is possible and necessary to work for a general counterattack by the workers movement against the government's economic policy, even in the present conditions. It is possible to defeat this policy, to counter it with the powerful threat of a general strike, even if it is difficult to offer any positive perspective for an alternative government as a focus for the
In the early days of February 1984, we reached the highest level of working-class mobilization we have seen in recent years. On February 2 and 3, a half million workers were involved in struggle throughout the Spanish state against the government's reconversion
At this point, the government was cornered. It was the UGT that gave it a way out. Up to then the government had used the arrogant methods of technocrats. Henceforth it was to use the more subtle ones of trade-union bureaucrats. The movement was too strong to attack frontally. The government had to start by dividing it.
In fact, the new proposal the UGT made to the government as a condition for supporting it was a very simple one and involved all, the workers coming under the Employment Promotion Funds (FPE) were to have their work contracts "suspended" rather than annulled. The second part was advice to the government not to push big concrete reconversion operations but rather to seek agreements at the level of the individual concern. This was to pre-
We should mention in this regard, the clever response of a Sagunto worker at a solidarity meeting in Barcelona to a question about the "soviet." He said: "We did not create a soviet, because we could not."
13
vent a convergence of the problems in various industries or various enterprises in the same industry. As one of the UGT leaders said cynically,
"You can't step on everybody's corns at once."
The immediate consequence of these changes was that the UGT dropped the
ALAH criticisms it had been making of the government's policy in this field. It stopped participating in the fightback mobilizations, and adopted a line of total support for the government's plans. Its - whole purpose was to divide the move- LEMIIZ APURTO ment, to break up the united resistance.
Of course, the UGT had also to play on the fatigue that was developing and the lack of perspectives. These factors encouraged individual solutions, illusions that "suspended" work contracts would go back into force in two or three years, when the economy "came out of the
Moreover, the UGT convinced the government to play fully the card of early retirement, knowing that 15% of Spanish workers are 55 years old or older.
The government first tried to shift its tactics in the special-steel industry.
spite the truly heroic resistance of the Or- One successful struggle by workers in the Spanish state — against the Lemoniz nuclear power begozo workers in Hernani, in the province of Guipuzcoa, Felipe Gonzalez's government managed in mid-February to score its first victory in a crisis-struck
A few days later, it succeeded in defeating another of the exemplary struggles of the time, the fight of the workers at Potasas de Navarra. The CCOO had seemed to be leading the movement of resistance to layoffs up to then. But they were totally disoriented. Their stated objective of "negotiating reconversion" had no credibility, because the government discussed important questions only with the UGT. Was defeat inevitable?
What is more, the UGT's breaking of trade-union unity made it necessary to organize the struggles in a more deepgoing way. The mobilization had to be intensified, on the basis of explaining to the workers the reasons for continuing the struggle. It was necessary to reach an agreement on unity in action with the various sections of the trade-union left determined to maintain the mobilization. Finally, the leadership had to have the initiative to make the leap forward required by the government's new tactic. What was required to meet the challenge of the new situation was to prepare for a general strike.
But the CCOO leadership did none of
At first, it continued as if nothing had changed, calling "days of struggle"
Many political or organizational preparation, which were failures. talked a very radical language but in practice went for the "lesser evil," the "least bad" agreement possible.
In these conditions, at the end of February, the government launched its final offensive against Sagunto.
station in the Basque country (DR) time, it issued the order to "shut off Blast Furnace No. 2." The resistance went on for many more weeks, but at the beginning of April an accord was signed between the government and the factory committee. A few days later, it was approved by majority vote in the workers assembly.
The union leaderships, in particular the leaders of the CCOO, presented this agreement as a victory, playing up the only significant concession the government made - a formal commitment to create 500 jobs in Sagunto before the end of the year. But that was hardly a high price for the government to pay after 14 months of struggle, especially when you consider that 2,200 people were laid off, including 900 who were retired early, and the fact that the jobs that are to be created will be precarious. (6)
The vote for the agreement did not reflect any feeling of victory on the part of the workers. First of all, it has to be seen as a negative development that most opposed letting the temporary workers and and people of Sagunto participate in the vote, as some comrades correctly proposed. All those affected by the closing of the Sagunto plant, all those who took part in the fight for 400 days, should have been able to take part together in making the final decision, just as during the struggle, it was the "people's assemthat made the fundamental deAngel Olmos, regional secretary of the CCO, explained, most of the 2,157 votes for the compromise came from workers close to 55 years of age, who opted for "individual solutions," and those who were influenced by the UGT and the Eurocommunist section of the CCOO. The minority of 1,033 who opposed the agreement included the vanguard workers in the enterprise, who had taken the lead in the struggle.
Outside Sagunto, for militant workers throughout the workers movement - except those fooled by the manipulative speeches of the CCOO leaders - it was clear that a major battle had been lost, even though the workers are still far from having lost the "war" of the industrial
Was this defeat inevitable? Absolutely no! In reality, the question was posed for several weeks of using a means of struggle that could have been the springborad for the leap forward that the mobilization had to make in order to win. That was, a "self-called" meeting, as the Italian workers term it, of representatives of factory couneils and unions throughout the country to launch the initiative of building a general strike against the government's reconversion policy. Unfortunately, this project was not realized.
Why is such an initiative so important? The reason is that it answers to a fundamental problem that has arisen in the struggles in crisis-struck industries, in particular because they have run up against a "socialist" government.
In Sagunto, for example, we saw the struggle go through an initial phase led by
The CCOO themselves publicly denounced on October 6, 1983, the two most important projects for building industrial installations in Sagunto. The National Industrial Institute (INI) maintains that these schemes represent compliance with its commitment to create jobs. According to the CCOO report, the Enfersa fertilizer factory threatens an industry that already is suffering from 25% excess production.
The construction of this plant would touch off a reconversion of the entire industry. probably bringing the closure of the Enfersa plant in La Curna. As for the project of the Italian glass multinational SIV, it would create similar or still worse problems in an industry that has a 25% excess installed capacity. The bosses in this industry already raised the threat of reconversion on February 28, 1984, saying that the SIV factory in Sagunto, with its 350 workers "could make all the glass needed by the Spanish automotive industry."
International Viewpoint 18 June 1984
the normal trade-union structures, which was very deepgoing and marked by a high degree of unity.
This created favorable conditions for resisting a brutal and naked assault, for mounting pressure on