Spain: Cádiz – the path of class struggle

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The strike in the metalworking industry in the province of Cádiz – which has affected all companies, especially those involved in shipbuilding and repair, in the cities of San Fernando, Cádiz, Puerto Real and Jerez – has gained a strength that seemed impossible, considering the series of defeats and union capitulations that recently ended similar strikes in other provinces.

In summary, the sequence of events can be described as follows: four years after the signing of the last collective agreement in the sector (which CCOO and UGT signed at the last moment, against the will of a large part of the workers who had openly rejected it), tensions in the factories have increased, precisely because of that last agreement, the introduction of intermittent fixed-term contracts as a means of quick dismissals, and so on.

As part of the preparations for negotiations, the main trade unions (first UGT, then CCOO and CGT) called a two-day strike. The objective was clear: to allow workers — especially those who had become more radical in recent years and had joined the CGT, the Coordinadora de Trabajadores del Metal (CTM), or in some cases the Sindacato Andaluso de Trabajadores (SAT) — to release some of their repressed anger, as if these two days of struggle were intended purely to let off steam.

After this partial strike, announced in advance and carefully adapted to the needs of the employers, the script foresaw a farcical round of negotiations: UGT — the union that had called the strike first — was to hold “tense negotiations” with the employers’ associations representing companies in the sector (large companies such as Navantia have their own collective agreement and are excluded from these talks).

As part of this theatre, a preliminary agreement was signed early on Sunday morning and presented to the workers on Monday morning, with the aim of getting them back to work that same day. At this point, however, the situation turned around: the majority of the workers (according to the bourgeois press, those working in the Bay of Cádiz) rejected the preliminary agreement and decided to continue the strike, under the legal coverage of the CGT — whose metalworking section refused to call off the strike —; the workers therefore continued striking, this time for an indefinite period, without the bosses or the government being sure whether they would be able to stop them at will, as they had always done thanks to the collaboration of the big trade unions.

• Full compliance with the collective agreement for all workers in the sector

• Proper regulation of “fijo discontinuo” (intermittent fixed-term) employment contracts

• A ban on working in factories under contracts other than those applicable to the metal industry

To fully understand its significance, it is necessary to keep in mind that the metal industry in Cádiz consists of countless small and medium-sized enterprises that provide services to the major players in the sector (Navantia, Airbus, Dragados Offshore, etc.). This fragmentation of so-called “auxiliary companies” is the result of the gradual decapitalisation that the metal industry underwent forty years ago, when it still relied on large state-owned companies.

The process of privatisation was accompanied by the phenomenon of outsourcing, whereby the main companies gave up the workforce and capital needed to carry out tasks that could instead be subcontracted according to the existing workload.

In this way, today in the same shipyard where a single ship is being built, several different companies may be working simultaneously, each with its own group of workers performing specific tasks.

In practice, this has led to the stratification of the proletarian masses, who were previously employed by a single company, and to a fragmentation of professional skills within the sector.

The problem for the workers has been further aggravated by the fact that many companies, aiming to lower wages, make use of collective agreements different from those intended for the metal industry (under the pretext that the specific nature of their activity requires it).

So not only are there different workers from different companies, but even a single construction project may, from a legal point of view, be entirely split according to industrial sectors.

For decades, this has been a great strength of the bourgeoisie. Faced with the long-lasting crisis in the metalworking industry (which began in the 1980s and, over the following two decades, led to a profound restructuring of industry, working methods, etc., while workers were constantly confronted with the threat of relocating production abroad, competition from Korea, or any other form of blackmail), the strategy was always the same: to lower labour costs through the division and consequent weakening of what had once been a strong and combative working class.

First of all, this was achieved by dividing workers into young and old, encouraging the latter to leave through advantageous early retirement schemes, while imposing much worse working conditions on the former, or dismissing them outright.

Then came a division by company: those that remained in state hands (fully or partially owned by SEPI for reasons of strategic state control), and those that were privatised.

Another blow was the dismantling of large companies and the transfer of workloads to auxiliary firms, where working conditions are far worse than in the larger companies.

Finally, the last big trump card of employers and the state was the introduction of the so-called “fijo discontinuo” contract (intermittent fixed term contract), which was expanded in 2022 by Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz of the left-wing bloc SUMAR (the successor to the left alliance Unidas Podemos, currently part of Pedro Sánchez’s third government alongside the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) as part of a labour reform.

Thanks to this form of contract, companies can tie workers to them and keep them available, without having to bear the costs of dismissals, rehirings, etc., and in addition they have access to labour pool, which they can use according to their needs at any time.

This description of the situation in Cádiz can be applied to any local segment of the metalworking industry one might choose to examine: Ferrol, Vigo, the Basque Country, Valladolid, Valencia… everywhere the dynamic has been the same, and the result therefore almost identical: a divided proletariat, both in legal terms and in working conditions; and employers’ associations, with the help of class-collaborationist trade union organisations that have sealed this situation over the years, relying on the relative social peace established among the employees of the main companies (those who suffer slightly less harsh conditions), in order to impose brutal exploitation on the proletarians working in auxiliary firms.

However, the situation in Cádiz is particularly harsh. Outside the metal industry, the province of Cádiz is practically a desert in terms of job opportunities: it is among the provinces with the highest unemployment rates in Spain, with poverty exceeding the Spanish average and a practically non-existent industrial sector. It is no coincidence that the entire region has seen the rise of a criminal network involved in drug trafficking from Morocco, employing hundreds of young people who would otherwise know nothing but hunger.

In Cádiz, alongside working-class neighbourhoods that applaud the strikers expressing their own discontent, there are also slums and villages where residents protect members of criminal clans from the Guardia Civil, because thanks to the mafias, at least they have something to eat.

This situation has put even greater pressure on metalworkers, especially employees of auxiliary companies who move between unemployment (now under the “fijo discontinuo” regime) and work, and who are constantly threatened with being blacklisted — for refusing to work under certain conditions, for not being sufficiently compliant, or simply at the whim of the shift supervisor.

This “industrial reserve army,” which the bourgeois class uses to further pressure the proletariat — temporarily or permanently — represents a first-class tool of order and pacification, and in the hands of the bourgeoisie it always serves to discipline proletarians who live under the threat of hunger for themselves and their families.

This situation led to the emergence of a list of demands raised by the metalworkers both at the assemblies that called for the strike and within the two trade unions that made it possible — CGT and CTM. These demands raise a fundamental issue which, however, is unacceptable for employers, whether public or state-owned: unity, meaning equal working conditions, an end to the fragmentation of labour, NO to discrimination, and NO to repression.

In recent years, a proletarian layer willing to fight and to push forward the demands raised by this struggle has emerged within the metal industry in Cádiz. Already in 2021, when the previous collective agreement was signed with considerable help from the riot police (under the direction of PSOE and Podemos), there was a risk that the struggle, betrayed by the CC.OO. and UGT unions, would get out of control — both because part of the workers refused to accept the agreements and thanks to their efforts to extend the conflict beyond the factories and to mobilise the entire working class of Cádiz.

At that time, the then-unknown CTM union was at the forefront of the protests and attempts to break the social peace imposed by the class-collaborationist unions. In the end, however, supported by the entire spectrum of the parliamentary left, they imposed a return to work under appalling conditions.

Four years later, the situation had deteriorated to such an extent that a minority, which had previously been easily repressed and dismissed, managed to bring thousands of proletarians along with them, secured the continuation of the strike, and rejected the policy of class collaboration supported by UGT and CC.OO. And not only that — they did so with an explicit appeal for unity and solidarity with the proletarians who are in the worst conditions, explicitly rejecting — just as the CGT representative did at the assembly on Monday, 23 June — any dual model of hiring and working relationships, and pushed these demands through ongoing strikes and mobilisations.

The UGT, which chaired the strike committee, signed a preliminary agreement that put a new noose around the workers’ necks: starting with a “youth contract” that would allow companies to pay new employees 25% less, then introducing a hazard pay bonus to be paid over seven years, and ending with a wage increase that does not make up for the real wage losses of recent years…

For both the UGT (or the CC.OO., which pretends not to accept the agreement in order to play the card of radicalism and thus maintain its position as a “valuable negotiating partner”) and the employers, the goal is to secure social peace that will allow companies to handle the expected increase in workload in the coming years without difficulty.

It is no coincidence that the collective agreement they are trying to impose would be valid until 2032!

In the turbulent economic and political context that is taking shape, with a large-scale rearmament plan of the major imperialist powers already in preparation, the bosses of the metal industry and their opportunist allies see a business opportunity that no bourgeois would refuse. And in order to profit from it, they must secure a docile workforce that will allow them to achieve profit margins high enough to make the necessary investments worthwhile.

For the metalworkers of Cádiz, the path is, for once, clear: only the means and methods of class struggle can lead to victory in a battle that must inevitably be waged against the bourgeoisie. The blackmail widespread over recent decades (workload in exchange for worse working conditions), which was always reflected in a conciliatory union policy of “defending jobs above all,” has turned out to be a trap that has plunged workers into unprecedented insecurity.

And it was from this perspective that their response emerged: aware of the great opportunity on which the bourgeois class could enrich itself at their expense, with such promising business prospects… they refused to accept the usual threats and declared an indefinite strike until victory.

And not only that — they carried it out with methods typical of proletarian struggle: pickets, strikes, joint assemblies open also to other sectors of workers, illegal demonstrations aimed at uniting the rest of the city’s working population, solidarity with those arrested, and so on.

For now, their ability to break ties with the UGT and CCOO., which are brake mechanisms that the bourgeoisie usually employs as the first line of defense against workers’ struggle, has given them the strength to force the bosses to at least partially concede to their most urgent demands.

However, this does not mean that there are no obstacles. Besides the major organizations of political and trade union opportunism, there are other forces that seek to divert the proletariat from the path of class struggle. In these disputes, a second line of containment is also emerging, made up of the classic far left, which is already showing up at demonstrations and picket lines in an effort to gain popularity and thus influence, as well as certain sectors of the so-called “alternative trade union movement,” which also represents an anti-proletarian force that will be deployed when the right moment comes.

The example of the metalworkers of Cádiz shows not only that (obviously!) the proletarian class is a living force, but also that class struggle conducted outside the legal apparatus of the bourgeoisie, against the policy of social peace, against trade-union opportunism, etc., can and must be revived wherever the living conditions of the proletariat continue to worsen as a result of the demands of the capitalist economy.

This is the example these workers have set: the bourgeoisie and its state will always stand against the proletariat, and the only way to even think of defeating them is through the practice of genuine class struggle — a struggle that takes into account only the needs of the proletarians, that does not resort to negotiation without struggle, that does not accept social peace as a precondition for agreements, and that confronts repression with the strength drawn from class unity.

For the revival of the strike as a weapon of the proletariat’s class struggle for both immediate and general demands!

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