Striking to Renew: Basque Unions’ Organizing Strategies and Use of the Strike‐Fund. British Journal of Industrial Relations - LSE

Enlazo a continuación el resumen del articulo con Jon Las Heras que se publicará en la revista British Journal of Industrial Relations de la London School of Economics, cuyo resumen reproduzco a continuación. Versión borrador anterior se puede descargar desde aqui.

Striking to Renew: Basque Unions’ Organizing Strategies and Use of the Strike‐Fund

‘There is no union renewal without striking’ has been the underlying logic driving collective bargaining and union renewal dynamics in the Basque Country. This article shows how the Basque sovereigntist unions ELA (Euskal Langileen Alkartasuna) and LAB (Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak) have formed a ‘counterpower’ bloc, in opposition to CCOO (Comisiones Obreras) and UGT (Union General de Trabajadores) that are more prone to engage into social dialogue. The formers’ renewal strategy based on organizing workers ‘deeply’ — especially with ELA's recurrent use of a strike‐fund that fosters membership participation and affiliation through confederal solidarity — has altered union politics in the Basque Country. This has produced very high strike rates since the 2000s, perhaps the highest in Europe, and a ‘spill over’ effect that polarizes union alliances substantially. The article brings out the question of how unions could possibly locate industrial conflict within their renewal strategies and transform their organizations accordingly. Methodologically, the article contributes to the literature on strikes by underlining the importance of studying strikes critically, as a conscious collective process, in order to understand that their uneven development also derives from concrete unions’ strategies. 

Una tentativa de traducción al castellano es la siguiente:

Hacer huelga para renovar: las estrategias de organización de los sindicatos vascos y el uso de la caja de resistencia

“No hay renovación sindical sin huelga” ha sido la lógica subyacente que impulsa la dinámica de la negociación colectiva y la renovación sindical en el País Vasco. Este artículo muestra cómo los sindicatos soberanistas vascos ELA (Euskal Langileen Alkartasuna) y LAB (Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak) han formado un bloque de 'contrapoder', en oposición a CCOO (Comisiones Obreras) y UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores) que son más propensos a participar en el diálogo social. La estrategia de renovación basada en la organización "profunda" de los trabajadores - especialmente con el uso recurrente de ELA de la caja de resistencia que fomenta la participación y afiliación de los miembros a través de la solidaridad confederal - ha alterado la política sindical en el País Vasco. Esto ha producido tasas de huelga muy altas desde la década de 2000, quizás las más altas de Europa, y un efecto de "desbordamiento" que polariza sustancialmente las alianzas sindicales. El artículo plantea la cuestión de cómo los sindicatos podrían ubicar el conflicto industrial dentro de sus estrategias de renovación y transformar sus organizaciones en consecuencia. Metodológicamente, el artículo contribuye a la literatura sobre huelgas al subrayar la importancia de estudiar las huelgas de manera crítica, como un proceso colectivo consciente, para entender que su desarrollo desigual también se deriva de estrategias sindicales concretas.

Makinen ondorengo produktuak

Reproduzco a continuación el artículo que ha hecho la periodista Uxue Gutierrez en Berria, dónde recoge algunas consideraciones que hacemos al hilo de la instalación de la empresa Amazon en Ezkerraldea.

Makinen ondorengo produktuak

Amazon AEBetako banaketa enpresak gune logistiko berria irekiko du Trapagaranen datozen egunetan. Proiektu horrek eztabaida asko piztu ditu; sindikatuek salatu dute Amazonek «lan prekarioa» sortzen duela; enpresaburuek, berriz, uste dute Amazonek sortuko duen aberastasuna atzerrian islatuko dela.

 

(...)

Euskal Herriko industriaren behinolako epizentroan kokatuko da banatzailea, zerbitzuen aroa bete-betean besarkatu duen eremuan. «Fabrika industrialen itxieren ondotik heldu dira zerbitzu enpresak, eta batez ere banaketa enpresak eta enpresa komertzialak». Lluis Rodriguez ekonomistak azaldu du fenomeno hori industrialde izandako eremu askotan gertatzen ari dela. Aldaketak bainoago, ezartzen ari diren merkataritza ereduek kezkatzen dute: «Amazonen eta merkataritza gune erraldoien ereduak ekonomia eta bizitza botere transnazional oligopolikoen menpe uzten du, eta kontrakoa sustatu behar da».

(...)

Rodriguezek, berriz, argi du tokian tokiko merkataritzaren aldeko apustua egin beharko litzatekeela. «Tokiko saltokiek auzoen bizitza elikatzen dute, eta jendea espazio publikoetara erakartzen. Merkataritza tradizionalak enplegu gehiago eta hobea sortzen du».

Bada, Amazonek piztu dituen kezken artean ageri dira sortuko dituen lanpostuen kopurua eta mota. 50 lanpostu iragarri ditu, aurretik lur horretan zegoen enpresak sortzen zituen baino nabarmen gutxiago. «BabcockWilcox 5.500 langile izatera iritsi zen 70eko hamarkadan, eta 2011n, ixteko prozesua hasi zuenean, 400 behargin inguru zituen. Amazonek 50 lanpostu sortuko ditu; nahiko eskasa dirudi, herriaren eta inguruko eremuen egoera ikusita».

(...)

Aldaketaren itzala

Eraldatu ala hil. Egoera hori du Ezkerraldeak aurrean, lantokien itxiera geldiezinaren poderioz. Amaiera orok beste hasiera bat ekarri ohi du, eta oraina ulertzeko atzera begira jartzea ere beharrezkoa izaten da askotan; dagoenaren eta datorrenaren bilakaera ez baita kasualitate hutsa izaten. Bilbo ezkerraldea osatzen duten herriak industria handien itxieren lekuko izan dira azken hamarkadetan, eta horrek eragina izan du lurraldearen paisaia ekonomikoan eta sozialean. Hala dio Rodriguezek: «80ko hamarkadatik, PSOEk eta EAJk ehun industrialaren desegituraketa bultzatu dute euren gobernu arduretatik. Nazioarteko lehiakortasunaren ondorioz, deslokalizazioari bidea eman diote horrela». Logika horren azken adibidea da Naval ontziola, baina baita aurretik erori ziren industria astuneko erreferenteak ere: Euskalduna, Bizkaiko Labe Garaiak, Aurrera eta Mecanica de la Peña 1980ko eta 90eko hamarkadetan desagertu ziren. Eta 2008ko krisiaren bete-betean hondoratu zen, hain zuzen ere, Babcock Wilcox.

(...)

Enpleguari dagokionez, Rodriguez ez dator bat eskualdea berpizteko proposatutako soluziobidearekin. «Eredu malgua duten enpresetan langileria askoz kolektibo hauskorragoa da, eta enpresek mekanismoak dituzte tranpak egiteko: negoziazio kolektiborako espaziorik ez dago, lan hitzarmenetako zirrikituak bilatzen dituzte eta euren etekinak areagotuz ezinezkoa da bizi baldintza oneko eredua sustatzea». Amazon enpresa eredu hori ezartzeko gai da.

(...)

Lan baldintzen kezka

Lanpostu kopuruaz, zerbitzu motaz eta zerga ereduaz gain, sortuko duen enplegu motak ere haserrea piztu du. «Amazon eredua lanaren zatiketan eta fragmentazioan oinarritzen da, langileen esplotazio are handiagoan; esklabotza da kasik. Halere, Euskal Herrian sindikatuen erresistentzia hasi da enpresen estrategia berri horren aurka borrokatzeko prest agertzen», ziurtatu du ekonomistak.

A dose of strategic realism? Or how a strike-fund can be effective

Taking into consideration all the discussed above, the appropriate strategic question is the following one: if a strike-fund appears to be an organizational instrument that can help workers to improve considerably their working conditions at the workplace and enhance their class power collectively, why are not other trade unions making use of it too?

Jon Las Heras (@jonlhc) & Lluís Rodríguez (@lluisraeco), political economists and members of the Institute of Economics and Self-Management.

Is capitalism built through class oppression? Of course. Although it seems that as we keep talking about how things are so bad, even, about how worse they are getting with the rise of proto-fascist governments across the world – despite all these (new?) phenomena – it is obvious that nothing is really changing, or at least in our favor. To such pessimist answer, we should dare to make a provocative extension and state the following: yes, capitalism is disgustingly built by putting us against each other but WITH OUR INVOLVEMENT, with us being necessary accomplices of its hegemony and of its ugly transformation.

To our mind, we need to start changing our object of attention and acknowledge that capitalism is ALSO the expression of labor’s incapacity to organize and strike back effectively. We should be more self-critical, which does not mean self-destructive and start trying new things. Don’t you feel we have had enough of compassion and that it is already the time for a recalcitrant dose of strategic realism? But when we talk about new “things”, new “methods”, we are not talking about “original” or “utterly new” forms of class struggle – as some may prefer to believe they do exist outside history –, but instead we conceive them as basic forms of class organization and solidarity that perhaps, in the right context and dose, can unfold a set of new events that surface underlying contradictions. To our mind, as it stands now, right-wing class movements are making “goals” while the radical-left remains in a sort of state of confusion, an impasse, in which the time is running against us. 

In such apparently gloomy landscape, and after seeing how European workers and class organizations have not managed to build effective transnational solidarity structures and discourses to counter-fight austerity and neoliberal regulation since 2008, a little country – Euskal Herria – in the Spanish state has provided us with renewed hopes. But these are not hopes of the kind in which the world is going to change to the much better very soon, but more realistically, that from the standpoint of an average Basque worker, there are some few things that one can do in order to make a step forward, no matter how small, but still, a step forward. A sort of successful incursion in a context of guerrilla-warfare perhaps?

More concretely, Euskal Langileen Alkartasuna (ELA), the largest and most representative trade union in the Basque Country, is a class organisation that, and from a position of ‘counter-power’, has sought to build organisational strength vis-à-vis the employers, the government and conservative unions, through the empowerment of its rank-and-file, predominantly, in collective bargaining and industrial conflict processes. Since the mid-1990s it opted to leave aside the historical turn that the rest of social-democratic unions were taking across the western world: to change from a position that seeks greater working conditions to that of conformism and micro-corporatism. A corporatist logic makes us think that the worse is to come and yet that it is better not to trigger the conflict, so we buy-into the enemy’s discourse and believe that by lowering the standards may be the explosion will put off. Ironically, such very strategy undermines all the conditions that once were gained and, at the same time, makes such actors to the eyes of the rest as accomplices of the course of history.

ELA has bet on gaining both political and financial autonomy (around 93% of its expenditures are self-covered) in order to be capable of setting some ‘red-lines’ that the rest of big unions are currently incapable of setting: not signing dual-wage-scales, not signing working-time and workload increases, not fostering calendar flexibility, not signing vacuous sector agreements that are not likely to be implemented at the workplace, and establishing new alliances with more confrontational unions and social organisations among other things. Or put it differently, this union has gained political and organizational autonomy and strength by rejecting social dialogue with the government and other conservative unions in order to establish a ‘counter-power’ strategy that seeks to protect and organize the whole Basque working class in and through their organization.

ELA has 100.000 members but it organizes just less than 10% of all the strikes taking place within the Spanish state (60 out of 600-800 per year approx.), and in the last years it has managed to organize, overall, more strikes than the second largest social-democratic trade union in Spain (Union General de Trabajadores, UGT) which has 10 times more affiliates than ELA. Moreover, the scope of action of the Basque union is smaller, i.e. the Basque Country only represents less than a 5% of the Spanish workforce, and this union only represents one-third of all Basque unionized workers. In other words, this union is the main force behind the fact that the Basque Country hosted 36% of all the strikes taking place in Spain between 2000-2017. This concretizes also in the statistical fact that a worker engaging in a strike organised by ELA loses at least 7 days more for every day lost by a strike organized by UGT. Therefore, and taking into consideration that Spain is already supposed to be one of the most conflictive countries in Europe, this Basque union is playing very tough. 

Poder sindical, huelgas y negociación colectiva en el País Vasco (1995 - 2017)

A continuación reproduzco el resumen y presentación de la comunicación presentada con Jon Las Heras en el XI Congreso Vasco de Sociología y Ciencia Política el 6 de Septiembre de 2018 en Bilbao.

Poder sindical, huelgas y negociación colectiva en el País Vasco 

(1995-2017)

Según Richard Hyman, la huelga es una de las mayores expresiones de conflicto entre trabajo y capital: el proceso productivo y comercial se detiene, se activa la presión económica y financiera hacia las empresas y tanto la parte trabajadora como la empresarial consolidan sus posiciones alrededor de unos intereses estructuralmente diferenciados en la confrontación y el eventual acuerdo colectivo.

A pesar de que en Euskadi se organizan prácticamente un tercio de las huelgas de todo el Estado español, la influencia que tienen las estrategias organizativas sindicales en las dinámicas de negociación colectiva y en el desarrollo de los conflictos laborales no han sido objeto de estudio desde una perspectiva de Economía Política del Trabajo.

Así, este estudio analiza una realidad histórica particular, y arguye cómo la política sindical y los recursos de infraestructura del sindicalismo mayoritario del País Vasco, a diferencia del sindicalismo español en la CAPV, derivan en una mayor capacidad potencial de confrontación y uso de la huelga cómo herramienta central para la negociación colectiva. Los recursos de infraestructura cómo son las personas asesoras sindicales, los gabinetes económicos y jurídicos y sobre todo la caja de resistencia confederal, definen los contornos de las organizaciones y poder sindical vasco en la negociación colectiva, y explican sustancialmente esa proporción de huelgas sobre población asalariada. El uso extensivo de la caja de resistencia con un subsidio diario de huelga superior al SMI para cada huelguista, refuerza el poder laboral y sindical, permitiendo introducir en los convenios vascos ‘cláusulas anti-reforma laboral’ y en su caso, llegar a mayores niveles de confrontación para la consecución de mejores contenidos cuantitativos y cualitativos de negociación colectiva.

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According to Richard Hyman, strikes are a radical expression of the underlying conflict between labour and capital: the labour and capital valorisation processes stop, and the economic and financial pressures towards corporations increase, while workers and employers consolidate their strategies around some structurally differentiated interests. Despite the fact that one third of all strikes in Spain take place in Euskadi, the influence that organising union strategies have in collective bargaining dynamics and in the development of industrial conflict has not been studied from a Political Economy of Labour perspective.

Thus, this study analyses a particular historical reality and it argues how union policy and infrastructural resources of the mayoritarian unions in the Basque Country, in contrast to the Spanish case, result in a greater capacity of confrontation and the use of the strike as a tool in collective bargaining. The infrastructural resources and supportive union officials, the economic and lawyer offices and, above all, the confederal resistance box explain the organisational boun daries and the power that Basque trade unionism has in collective bargaining; explaining the higher rates of strike activity in the economy. The extended use of the strike-box with a daily subsidy above the minimum income for each striker reinforces worker and union power, allowing to introduce in collective agreements ‘anti-labour-reform’ clasuses and, in many cases, better cuantitative and qualitative working conditions.