Four months later, DEMÓCRATA returns to the headquarters of Comisiones Obreras, in Madrid, to interview Unai Sordo. The general secretary of the country’s largest union then responded, in the face of a possible general strike call, that he did not see it as the most suitable instrument at this time. Nor did it see it as such in order to respond to the pressing housing crisis and the unrest it was generating. Now the union is heading toward the first general strike in fourteen years, scheduled for next 11 November.
QUESTION: Four months ago DEMÓCRATA asked you about the possibility of calling a general strike, linked to housing, and you didn’t see it clearly. What has changed since then?
ANSWER: That in the face of a structural problem such as the difficulty of accessing housing, a spark of emotionality has been sparked by the death of Maricarmen Abascal (the 87-year-old woman who died days after being evicted in Madrid), the intensely mobilizations, and the need to give a mobilizing dimension to social unrest.
On the other hand, that, just as in 2022, an increase in prices that all the signs suggest will be paid for again by salaries, with inflation in year-on-year terms above 5%, without us even being able to negotiate the renewal conditions of the agreement to negotiate collective bargaining agreements.
The strike does not respond to legislative aggression, but to giving voice to very deeply simmering unrest that emerged with Maricarmen’s eviction
We are aware that it is not a strike like those of the eighties or nineties. It does not respond to legislative aggression, but to giving a channel to mobilization and very deeply simmering unrest in part of Spanish society, which burst forth like a geyser with Maricarmen’s eviction and the refusal of Congress to validate the two royal decrees-law.
Q: Are there specific objectives, or is it mainly about channelling that discomfort?
A: There are specific objectives. In the short term, to urge employers’ associations to recover that negotiation of the collective bargaining agreements and to urge the Government to raise the SMI. But in the long run, to change the common sense of Spanish society about how to tackle the issue of housing. Whatever happens in the political cycle that the next elections bring, it has to be more intense and much more ambitious.
If housing does not become a social good and not an investment, the problem will not have a solution
The playing field has to be changed and housing has to be built as a pillar of the Welfare State. And that can only be done by recovering the idea of a large stock of public housing, or at least housing at protected prices, for the next decade, when it is at least 1.5 million homes. And to conceive of housing as basically a social good, not an investment, saving, or protection in old age, which is what it has been for the last five decades. Otherwise, the problem is not going to have a solution and it is the great socio-economic fracture that the working class has right now.
Q: Fourteen years have passed since the last general strike backed by the major unions. What differences are you finding when it comes to preparing it? Is there fear that, as you say, it is not a strike like the usual one, or as we understand it, that the response may be disappointing or may—how to digest that kind of...?
A: It is a heterodox strike from the moment it does not appear as a response to an aggression, and it is not settled only in the strictly labour sphere. Housing policy affects the working class in a very important way, but it is not anchored in labour legislation or the collective agreement.
We want to change the common sense of all of society on how to address the housing problem
And then it is a strike whose objective, basically, apart from what I have said, is to contribute to a large social mobilization. It is not about taking to the streets those who are already convinced that public housing is needed and to drive down the price of rents, but rather to win over support that is very broad and across society.
It is a matter of turning discomfort into a sociopolitical proposal around housing. Since it does not consist of changing four articles of a labor reform, the scenario is different. We are going to try to give the labor response the broadest dimension possible, but the real objective is for there to be a human tide of people out on the street who will change the axis of rotation of all political forces and all institutions on how to address the issue of housing.
Housing has to be a pillar of the Welfare State. And that can only be with a large public housing stock
Another characteristic that surely no other strike has had is that the impact of the housing problem is very asymmetrical in Spain. It does not affect in the same way the big cities, in areas under pressure from tourism, in inland Spain that is being emptied out, and even among the working class. It also does not affect equally the person who has a more or less paid apartment and the one who cannot go back home with their parents at 33 years old, or the one who has a mortgage that eats away half their salary.
These are very different effects, but the problem is structural and it runs so deep that it is worth making this exercise of heterodoxy. Also, to channel that social discontent and so that the generations that are affected the most also feel that class unions are close to their demands. That they do not see us as detached from a demand that fractures them socioeconomically and that they do not see us as sheltered only in wages and the collective agreement. That we are able to put housing, wages, prices, and public services into relation with each other.
THE ROLE OF UNIONS OF TENANTS
Q: So, during the last few weeks, has there been concern about falling behind or being left out, even being overwhelmed by alternative organizations such as the union of tenants?
A: It is not so much a matter of competition as of a different interpretation of what the working class is like today in societies, let’s say, postmodern ones. The tightnesses with a mortgage or with rent are outside the strictly labor relationship, but they condition it a great deal. Many times people tell you 'I can’t go on strike because, if I don’t, I won’t pay the mortgage'.
The ways of building collective subjectivities today are different from how industrial societies were, where the capital–labor conflict structured all the others. Now it is much more diverse, and societies push for all these conflicts to appear increasingly fragmented, apparently unrelated to one another. And I think that a class union has the obligation to try to link the genesis of those conflicts or how those collective subjectivities are stipulated.
It wasn’t a matter of competence with these organizations that, in fact, operate on a different parameter. They’re called unions but they really are dedicated to trying to collectivize a problem that is established in commercial relations, between who has a flat and who doesn’t have a flat, or who promotes flats and who can’t access those flats. It isn’t a labor union. That has been the analysis we’ve made, more than the fact of staying out of a mobilization that organizations were going to carry out that, in reality, are social movements that are doing a task in which it’s worth having an eye on.
OUTBREAK OF VIOLENCE AND LOOTINGS
Q: How do you see, from the union, the movements— to what extent, spontaneous, but yes, of course, very intense violence that has occurred in Barcelona and in Bilbao?
A: I’m a bit on edge, because I think it responds to some parameter that isn’t the usual one in the social mobilizations of our country. I think it isn’t good to make categorical statements until we have more data and a minimum reliability about what has happened. But yes, some things sound strange. It would be very good to know who they are and where they came from, how they got in contact, who calls them and who has coordinated them. Because it isn’t usual, for example, in a city like Bilbao, with episodes of street violence over many years, for these to end in acts of looting in establishments and shops. I hadn’t seen that.
It would be naïve not to assess a possible foreign interference in the episodes of street violence and looting
It has coincided in Barcelona; they coincide with some operating parameters in other cities in Europe; other similar mobilizations are also being promoted in an absolutely anonymous way… And we go back to the same thing: we are not in the eighties or nineties; we live in times of the use of metadata and of the possibility of segmenting calls for meetings according to certain profiles. In short, it sounds strange. We have to investigate where those calls for meetings come from.
Q: Do you associate these movements with issues of international geopolitics?
A: An attempt is being made to destabilize European countries in various ways; wars and hybrid mobilizations are talked about; a jump of 80,000 people (in Ceuta) to a southern border of the European Union has been promoted, by whoever it is and with the tolerance of whoever it is. Well, it would be naïve, at least, not to evaluate the possibility that there could be some kind of interference. At the very least, it is worth investigating it in depth. The North American security strategy has as its fundamental objective the destabilization of the European Union, they say. And they have also said that they will do it through forces of right-wing extreme populism. I am not in a position to know it, but it sounds strange, yes.
TOWARD A NEW LEGISLATURE
Q: What situation does he expect with regard to the upcoming elections? What is it that he asks of the parties, both the left and the right?
A: I hope that it will be possible to reiterate a majority of a progressive character which, in socio-economic terms, has even not existed in this last legislature. Junts worked more linked to the Partido Popular and Vox. I would urge the left-wing forces to have a clear proposal about the fact that what historical time demands is to protect what has been achieved, which is a lot in historical terms. I am not referring only to this legislature or the last ones, but to what Spain has been capable of building as a social state, with public services that have deteriorated since the financial crisis but that continues to be a model of social cohesion unprecedented in our history.
There are fewer and fewer certainties that what is common will save you from life's problems
And, together with that projection of what has been achieved, a great deal of ambition in what is yet to be achieved: it is necessary to install, as a guiding idea, that pillars must be incorporated into the Welfare State in the 21st century. One is housing, and I would suggest another, that of care. It is key to generate securities and certainties in the societies of the 21st century. That has to be the framework in which they have to play: protection of what has been achieved and ambition in what is yet to be achieved.
From then on, it is a matter of making public discussion pivot around the problems that truly affect social majorities and the daily lives of the working class. It is logical and natural, but that is not always the case in the so media-saturated societies we have, where often debates and public conversations run along very different paths.
Q: We go back again, with the issue of care, to other competencies transferred to the autonomous communities.
A: It’s that the deterioration of public services has to do not so much with the enormous disinvestment during the financial crisis and austerity as with the fact that the recovery of that investment has not been enough to cope with a population that is different—50 million inhabitants, almost ten million more than was expected at the beginning of the century—and more aged. And this funding to the communities, which had never been as large, has facilitated their process of partial privatization. The greatest segregation in access to healthcare or education is evident. Many resources are being put in, but the pillars and infrastructures of the Welfare State are not being strengthened.
The option of full employment exists: Spain can reach it in the next five years
Care is an obvious example: you transfer billions of euros to the autonomous communities, but 60% of the new dependency benefits are granted to non-professional care or to families to care for dependent people. You are not providing a public care infrastructure, and the social protection approach you are taking is very different. That is where the left has to focus its efforts to renew a social contract, because the great loss of people’s certainties has a lot to do with there being fewer and fewer certainties that, when faced with the problems of life, the common good will save you. That is where the matter has to be placed.
THE FUTURE OF WORK
Then protecting the work, in qualitative terms, has enormous challenges with all the use of artificial intelligence and the growing fear in increasing parts of the working class that their jobs are going to disappear radically. Not the least qualified, but those with medium qualification or even high qualification. It is a historical novelty. We have more employment than ever; we are raising average wages in an important way and there is more stability, but there is still a reasonable doubt about what will be the future of their jobs. That is another of the challenges for the left: to establish that the option of full employment exists in Spain and to accompany it with employment assurances.
P: And do you see the left-wing formations, especially, committed or on target when addressing these problems?
R: I think that, in general, the programmatic proposals of the left-wing forces, also the right-wing ones, are fairly well worked out and fairly precise. So what’s going on? Well, we live in highly media-driven societies and the dynamics of electoral sympathy do not move strictly in terms of programmatic rationality. The capacity to generate ideas that carry weight or public conversations has little to do with what the real problem is for people. In Spain we have had municipal and regional elections, where what was being voted on was the management of healthcare or education, where the war cries were “let them vote for you, Txapote.”
THE SOCIAL DIALOGUE AFTER 29N
P: What do you expect from the social dialogue after the next elections?
R: I would like that, whatever happens in the next legislature, the CEOE becomes more co-responsible. Spain has a magnificent opportunity, with its energy transformation, to install a comparative advantage for productive and industrial investment that we have never had. We have had it linked to low wages, low taxation, and comparative advantages that are not very desirable. And if we look at our country’s demographic curve, where between six and eight million people are going to retire in the next ten years, Spain can perfectly reach full employment in the next five years. This can be facilitated by reaching agreements on labor policies or investment policies or energy transition, with agreements between trade union and business organizations. But for that, you need an employers’ association that bets on the autonomy of social agents and a somewhat modern vision.
The CEOE has to decide whether it wants to go back to a Spain of low wages to compete from below
If it is thinking about low wages, about reducing social contributions so that the numbers of Social Security no longer add up and then there is a need to cut pensions, then we will return to the old Spain that competes from below. It is a decisive question that CEOE has to answer: what kind of country does it aspire to. It will be very important the political majority that is formed. Vox’s is a clearly backward-looking economic proposal, but even at this moment that of the Partido Popular is very worrying. Not in terms of left or right, but in terms of modernity versus regression.
Q: Does it expect that the CEOE will stir itself up if reforms are approved unilaterally without social dialogue?
A: If there were a progressive majority, I’m convinced it would go back to the negotiating table as in the first term. It was interested in reaching agreements to avoid unilateral legislation. In the second term it wasn’t interested because PP, Junts and Vox were going to throw them out. If you have very strong ideological blinders, you see things differently, but the results are there. The reforms that were carried out in the first term have a lot to do with the situation in the labor market, which is much better than it has historically been in terms of employment or stability. That’s where the companies’ momentum is, which are accumulating more surpluses than ever.
The proposals of PP and Vox are worrying in terms of regression versus modernity
Q: And what if the majority were on the right?
A: It depends a lot on the profile of the business community that conditions the most for the CEOE. In Spain there is a part of the business community that looks to the future, that invests, that renews companies and is aware that we have to bet on strategic autonomy and that you can’t go back to competitiveness based on low wages and precarious employment. And then there is another business community that basically is dedicated to changing the price of things more than generating value, to the granting of services, to the chanchulleo… For that business community, it does well for there to be no minimum wage and to devalue working conditions. It’s considerably more inefficient, much more shabby, but very influential and it moves very well in the Madrid villa and court. It’s the eternal story of Spain. This has already been going on for some of these some centuries and, unfortunately, the bad and the inept usually win.
WHAT’S LEFT OF THE TERM
Q: How are they going to pressure the Government to try to rescue the time recording register?
A: At this point in the film, not much can be done, but we have placed it on the agenda of the strike call. Until the very last day of the term, we are demanding that it meet the commitments on working time control and on the absorption and compensation of the wage supplements and complements it agreed with us and it hasn’t met.
TRAGEDY OF URDA AND RAILWAY SAFETY
Q: Without going into the details of this second accident in high-speed travel in less than a year (the Urda accident had occurred that same morning), what diagnosis do they make of the situation in the railway sector?
R: We are at the point of being able to learn all the data about what has happened. And finally, if at some moment in that security chain there is some kind of human error, the human error is because beforehand a series of technical failures have been concatenated. It is not worth saying that there was a human error. If there is a human error, it will be because other things failed beforehand.
It is astonishing how, in such a few months, two accidents of this dimension could have occurred. Of course, the safety and control systems have to have elements of automatic control that, if some fail, are replaced by others.
P: Have they, on the part of the union delegations in the railway companies, received that there have been problems arising from the incorporation of new companies due to liberalization, or from a lack of investment or maintenance?
R: We have always demanded that budgets be increased for the control and maintenance of safety and infrastructures. The railway system in Spain in recent years has notably increased its use, the intensity of use of the tracks, the railway operators, the number of trips and trains… And, therefore, it is necessary to increase and maintain a renewal of the safety systems and infrastructures.
I do not excuse that the quality has dropped in terms of punctuality ratios, but it can be understood due to the multiplication of uses. Now, when we talk about safety, that is very serious. Systems of control have to be installed that prevent the final decision from being able to depend on a human error. It is impossible to reach risk to zero, but we have to do the impossible to avoid that an incorrect decision produces this kind of consequences.
People who are dedicated to occupational health explain it very well. When there is a fatal workplace accident or one with some serious consequence, it is often argued that there is a risk practice on the part of the worker. A risk practice can occur, either because of an accelerated pace or because the watch is lowered, but the way to avoid these risks is for there to be sufficient protection to minimize the impact of human error. Let’s see what has happened with all the technical systems that, it seems, have had to fail beforehand.