National meeting of union delegates asserts unity of action

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On 16 June 1998, Spain's UGT and CC.OO trade union confederations held a national meeting of union delegates under the slogan For employment and solidarity. The unions' aim was to mobilise their members and reinforce their position in negotiations with the employers and the Government.

Under the slogan For employment and solidarity (Por el empleo y la solidaridad), the CC.OO and UGT trade union confederations jointly called a national meeting of company-level union delegates, which was held on 16 June 1998. The meeting was held in Madrid and was attended by around 4,000 people.

At the meeting, the leaders of both union confederations made public their main proposals for the negotiations that are underway with the employers and the government at an intersectoral level:

• promotion of greater employment security. The unions want more agreements at company and sector level to convert temporary contracts into permanent ones and to make the requirements for temporary recruitment stricter;

• broaching the issue of reducing and reorganising working time, with the objective of the 35-hour week. The unions seek to open a process of negotiations with the employers and call on the Government to adopt parallel measures to promote the reduction of working time;

• extended cover of unemployment benefit. At the present time, only one in two unemployed workers receives any form of economic protection;

• improved regulation of the part-time and "fixed-discontinuous" employment contracts. The unions want maximum working hours under these contracts to be regulated and a guarantee of equal treatment, equal opportunities and equivalent levels of social protection to those on full-time contracts; and

• introduction of more progressive and more equal tax policy, as well as greater public investment aimed at employment creation. The unions reject the Government's tax reform (ES9803250N) totally because they believe that it is regressive and that it may endanger social protection. They also consider that the employment plan (ES9712235F) published by the Government is insufficient and that more resources must be devoted to generating employment.

With the meeting of delegates, the union leaders hoped to mobilise their members and reinforce their position in the current round of negotiations with the employers' associations on the development of the intersectoral agreements signed in April 1997 (ES9806256F). Relationships between unions and employers are going through a difficult phase due to the alleged reluctance of the main employers' organisation, CEOE, to fulfil one of the commitments reached in these agreements, namely negotiating the reduction and reorganisation of working time.

The delegates' meeting was also called to give greater publicity to the unions' claims and to promote negotiations with the Government in several areas, including the 1999 employment plan, the extension of unemployment cover, the treatment of part-time employment and incentives for permanent contracts.

Although the meeting was called jointly, different tactics were applied by the leaders of the two union confederations, and some tension appeared. The leaders of UGT have adopted a more radical position, stating that it is necessary to recover the "pressure-negotiation" strategy to achieve genuine negotiations with the employers and the Government. For UGT, the meeting of delegates was the beginning of a campaign of mobilisation that may culminate, if necessary, in a general strike in autumn 1998. The leaders of CC.OO, on the other hand, have adopted a far more moderate position, considering that the meeting is a "campaigning action" and that what is really important is to achieve the implementation of agreements at company level. Despite the differences, the general secretaries of both organisations wished to make it clear that the tension that has recently been observed between the unions in some sectors and companies in no way threatens their unity of action.