When Corporatism Fails: Trade Union Strategies and Grassroots Resistance to the Spanish Economic Crisis

Abstract

This article analyses the fragmented working class struggles that emerged in Spain after the eruption of the economic crisis in 2008–2010. Through the use of qualitative methods, such as in‐depth interviews and activist participant observation, the article traces the progressive institutionalization of the major Spanish trade unions—Comisiones Obreras and Union General de Trabajadores—, which during the crisis have prioritized the defense of social dialog over the adoption of more radical strategies. The article argues that the incapacity of institutionalized trade unions to organize an increasing proportion of displaced workers, including unemployed and precarious workers, has been challenged through the establishment of new, more inclusive grassroots forms of resistance and mobilization based on civil disobedience, prefigurative practices, and direct action.

Breaking Fragmentation through Mobilization: The Development of a Collective Identity during Movistar’s Contractors’ and Technicians’ Strike in Spain

“…2 For this mobilization wave, unions were too embedded in the social and political model that led to the economic and social crisis and were considered co-responsible for the situation. Furthermore, this has been linked to the emergence of the 15-M Movement and other grass-roots movements (anti-eviction platforms, yayo-flautas – retired people against austerity – and other social movements) that are based in assemblies characterized by horizontality and direct communication in direct opposition to institutionalized and bureaucratic practices (Las Heras and Ribera-Almandoz, 2017). Although Movistar’s strike is not strictly related to the effects provoked by the reforms of collective bargaining, the features of the strike cannot be separated from a general context that revitalized grass-roots movements, assemblies and direct action as mechanisms to express discontent in a context of suspicion regarding the bureaucratic practices of the main unions.…”

Financial resource curse in the Eurozone periphery

“…Collective bargaining and social concertation sought to link nominal wages with inflation rates, though real wages did not keep pace with labor productivity. The sustainability of domestic demand was progressively eroded while the economy grew, putting increased pressure on all those struggling to keep up (Las Heras & Ribera-Almandoz, 2017).…”

“…Indeed, internal devaluation 'explains 33% of total external sector readjustment over the 2010-2018 period, 98% of which is driven by the demand effect, with the remaining 2% resulting from price effects' (Villanueva et al, 2020, p. 292). Labor market liberalization and other nostrums of reform, driven by the one-size-fits-all EU worldview, have achieved little of economic value yet caused much social damage (Buend ıa, 2020;Las Heras & Ribera-Almandoz, 2017;Perez & Matsaganis, 2019). Neither country's experience seems to suggest that they had definitively graduated from the periphery.…”

To sign or not to sign? Union strategies towards provincial metal sector agreements in the Catalan and Basque automotive industries

“…Recent studies have presented these as hybrid actors that have sought to secure their 'institutional power' through social dialogue at state level (Hamann, 2011;Luque-Balbona and Gonzalez-Begega, 2016;Martínez Martinez-Lucio, 2016;Rigby and García-Calavia, 2017) and through their 'associative power' and class identity by mobilizing the rank and file in general strikes against neoliberal labour reforms, occasionally allying with emerging social movements like the Indignados (Molina and Barranco, 2016). Some have questioned the effectiveness of engaging simultaneously with both strategies (Köhler and Calleja-Jimenez, 2017;Las Heras and Ribera-Almandoz, 2017;Pérez-de-Guzmán et al, 2016).…”