Spain: heroic metalworkers' strike in Cádiz

Since 23 June, thousands of metalworkers in the province of Cádiz, in southern Spain, have been on indefinite strike against their working conditions, in what is already the longest struggle in this industry in the province's history. The previous indefinite strike in November 2021, for wage increases, lasted nine days.

[Originally published in Spanish at comunistasrevolucionarios.org]

The small subcontracting companies of the metal industry are at the epicentre of the strike. They work for the larger companies based in the province of Cádiz: the state-owned shipyards of Navantia (San Fernando, Puerto Real and Cádiz), the company Dragados Offshore, Airbus and the steel company Acerinox. 26,000 workers in 3,000 companies are involved.

The workers are facing harsh repression. 19 have been arrested and dozens have been injured. Many are also facing fines for gathering and demonstrating ‘illegally’. This is thanks to the so-called ‘Gag Law’, a repressive law passed in 2015 by the previous right-wing government, which the ‘progressive’ PSOE-SUMAR government has not repealed despite promising to do so when it came to power in January 2020.

The betrayal of the UGT and CCOO

Most notably, the strike is taking place despite the opposition of the two main unions in the metalworking sector, Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), which have openly betrayed the workers' struggle.

The UGT signed an infamous agreement with the employers that had been overwhelmingly rejected by the workers' assemblies on 27 June. CCOO, although it did not sign the agreement with the employers, also called for the strike to be abandoned. In a statement distributed to its union delegates, it said that it was necessary to be “consistent, legal and responsible”, adding that: “Anarchy is never the right path, and even less so with utopias that are known to be unachievable”.

This is how these bureaucrats conceive of the class struggle: when workers display enormous heroism and show the willingness to make the greatest sacrifices for their cause, they describe it as “anarchy”. When workers decide they are not satisfied with crumbs, but denounce their oppression as a class and demand full satisfaction of their demands, this is described as a “utopia that cannot be achieved”. 

Here we see the enormous distance between these ‘leaders’ and the workers they are supposedly obliged to defend. It is therefore not surprising that the most exploited layers of the class, the workers grouped in the auxiliary industries, despise these unions and remain unaffiliated.

This explains why the two other, smaller unions – the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the Central de Trabajadores del Metal (CTM), which are firmly committed to the workers – have taken the lead in the struggle.

How did we get here?

The metalworking sector is currently enjoying a golden age, with a guaranteed workload for the coming years. The Cádiz metal employers' association announced just over a month ago that another 6,000 workers will be needed over the next five years. Thus, the metal industrialists of Cádiz, large and small, are making money like never before. 

The sector's profits rest on the brutal exploitation of workers in the auxiliary industries. They have no guaranteed, permanent work throughout the year, and they are subjected to all kinds of blackmail daily. Their wages are low, and they need to work overtime to make ends meet. Recently, a job offer for a boilermaker was exposed in the media, as it offered a daily wage of €60 for 12 hours of work, seven days a week, with no breaks.

The new collective bargaining agreement, signed by the UGT union behind the workers' backs, will be valid for eight years and establishes a new job category for newly hired workers, who will receive only 75 percent of the wage established in the collective agreement. 

The metalworkers' struggle in Cádiz is emblematic, particularly in a proletarian area such as the Bay of Cádiz with powerful traditions of workers' struggle / Image: CGT Zona Sur, Twitter

One of the workers' main demands is to restore the ‘toxicity bonus’, a wage supplement for the polluting materials they work with. This ‘toxicity bonus’ was removed from the Cádiz metalworkers’ collective agreement in 2012, with the crisis the sector was going through at the time used as an excuse. The agreement signed by the UGT will only restore the bonus in 2030! The agreement also fails to guarantee job stability for workers who work intermittently throughout the year.

The workers are also demanding the elimination of ‘blacklists’, which discriminate against workers who stand out for their struggle; an improvement in sick pay; and wage rises tied to inflation, with retroactive effect from 1 January 2024 to 2026. Above all, the workers complain that the bosses never comply with their collective agreements. They are therefore demanding the creation of a worker-employer monitoring committee.

For this reason, when the agreement signed by the UGT with the FEMCA employers' association was announced, the overwhelming majority of workers voted against it in impromptu assemblies held at the factory gates. They decided to continue with an indefinite strike, which is still ongoing.

It should be added that the UGT and CCOO divided the workers from the outset, when they called an initial two-day strike on 18 and 20 June to force negotiations with the employers. At that time, they left the workers of the large metal companies in Cádiz – Navantia, Airbus, Dragados Offshore and Acerinox – out of the struggle. These companies have their own collective agreements with their employees, with better conditions than the metal agreement for the province of Cádiz, which covers the auxiliary companies.

The current indefinite strike has been called by the CGT and CTM unions and has included daily assemblies to assess the struggle, permanent picket lines at the entrances to large factories, demonstrations of up to 3,000 workers, rallies and violent clashes with the police.

The situation is difficult because the workers have been abandoned to their fate by the large trade unions, and the struggle has been concentrated in the Bay of Cádiz, home to the Navantia, Dragados Offshore and Airbus shipyards. A resistance fund has been set up to collect money for the strikers.

The reason for the combative and determined struggle compared to the indefinite strike of 2021 is that the workers feel strong. They know that the companies are losing money. Above all, they had already had a warning of the treachery of the UGT and CCOO leaderships, and they are not willing to give up the struggle easily.

All our support for the struggle

The metalworkers' struggle in Cádiz is emblematic, particularly in a proletarian area such as the Bay of Cádiz with powerful traditions of workers' struggle. It is a condemnation of the current bureaucratic leaderships of the UGT and CCOO in Spain, which are isolating the struggles in the metal sector that are taking place throughout the country. As the struggle in Cádiz was just beginning, another indefinite strike in the metal sector in Cantabria ended, which lasted a week and also included violent clashes with the police.

Right now, there is another indefinite strike in the metal sector in Cartagena, in south-eastern Spain, affecting workers in auxiliary companies of another large shipyard owned by the public company Navantia. More than 2,000 workers are involved, with similar demands to those of their colleagues in Cádiz. The conclusions are clear: the struggle of all metalworkers in the country must be unified. Isolated, we can be defeated more easily, but united we would be invincible. 

Another conclusion we can draw is about the nefarious role played by the auxiliary companies that work for large companies. Their role is to divide the working class. Thousands of workers work side by side in the same physical space for dozens of different companies.

These small companies must be absorbed by the large ones, starting with those that work for public or semi-public companies such as Navantia and Airbus, which were spun off from them in the 1990s. In the meantime, there must be a common collective labour agreement for all metalworkers, with the same pay for the same work and the same working conditions, regardless of the company they work for.

After 11 days of mobilisations and repression, it is impossible to predict exactly how much longer the struggle will last. But the workers of Cádiz need maximum support and solidarity. Time is also against the employers, who are seeing how they are losing money and have even threatened a lockout.

The struggle has now entered a decisive phase. We give our full support to the heroic struggle of the Cádiz metalworkers, who are writing a heroic page in the history of the workers' struggle in this sector. Their victory will be a powerful stimulus to the entire Spanish working class, which also suffers from overexploitation, unpaid overtime and wages that do not reach the end of the month. Above all, it will increase their class consciousness and awareness of the incompatibility of a decent future with the capitalists and their governments at its helm of society.