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Spanish car workers fight plant closures

Julian Coppens writes from Cadiz

Despite being held back by a “socialist” government and their own trade union leaders Spain’s car workers look set to continue strike action.

In Spain they do some things differently, including strikes. Every now and then the nightly diet of boredom and distraction that passes for news in the capitalist press is relieved by images of workers blockading roads wearing black balaclavas or scenes of street battles with the police and burning tyres. Many of these scenes have involved the ongoing dispute with the US-based autoparts supplier Delphi.

The company plans to close its Puerto Real factory in Cádiz in the Andalucía region of Spain, making 1,600 workers redundant. Since it first revealed its proposals to close the Puerto Real factory in February, there has been a wave of demonstrations and strikes. For several weeks, there were daily demonstrations outside the town hall.

The initial protest in early March brought as many as 75,000 people into Cádiz, according to the unions. They included workers from the aeronautical firm Airbus, which is threatened with redundancies and closures in Spain. There were also workers from the shipbuilder Navantia, the aeronautical company EADS-CASA, Rota military base, metallurgical industries in Almería, Sevilla and Córdoba y Jaén, workers from telephone companies Telefonica and Vitelcom in Málaga and students from several universities.

Demonstrators were joined by the wives and children of the strikers, carrying banners proclaiming, “13 years of deceit,” workers from auxiliary industries saying, “We are also Delphi!” and workers from the contract cleaning and maintenance companies.

General strike called

Despite the scale of the protests and the outpouring of sympathy from the people of Cadiz, two months passed without any sign of the dispute being resolved. On April 20, leaders of the anarcho-syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (CGT) were forced to call a general strike. Unfortunately they limited their call to 14 towns under a general slogan demanding more industry for Cádiz rather than a direct appeal to prevent the closure of Delphi. Nor did they link their strike appeal to action against other threatened plants such as those at Airbus or Seat, Volkswagen’s Spanish unit.

There was a major response to the general strike call, bringing the region to a virtual standstill and arousing a great upsurge in solidarity. Industrial estates in the area were closed, public buses were running minimal services and the streets of the towns were largely empty. Government representatives have not made any statement on the numbers who participated, but reports suggest a total of 300,000 people took part.

Despite the militant struggle waged by the Delphi workers, as well as large demonstrations and solidarity action by workers elsewhere, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) government and unions have allowed Delphi management to shut the factory and emboldened them to threaten closure of other plants in Spain.

Despite this, the actions continued unabated into May and were organised by spontaneously formed workers’ committees. On the first day of the Trade and Tourism Fair, workers blocked access to the main entrance, presenting press reports on the struggles to the tourism chief of Andalucía. The workers also organised a five-day march along the 119 kilometres that separate the factory from the offices of the regional government in Sevilla. Road access to the plant was blocked with barricades and burning tyres.

One of the central demands made by the union leaders has been on PSOE Prime Minister Zapatero to intervene and take legal action against Delphi. This would be on the basis that the company has reneged on a deal awarding it substantial public subsidies in return for its commitment to long-term investment in the region, up to 2010.

According to the Andalusian authorities, Delphi’s Puerto Real plant has received regional and central government grants worth €60 million since 1986. The company has also benefited from the deal in the form of lower-than-the-average European Union corporate tax rates.

Bumper bonuses

In a report prepared for the US bankruptcy court, Delphi posted a net loss in March of $63 million. The company lost US$828 million in the fourth quarter of 2006 and $5.5 billion for all of last year. Despite the poor financial results, management has walked away with bumper bonuses. A federal bankruptcy judge approved Delphi’s request to give 440 top executives bonuses adding up to $37 million.

At the same time the company is seeking a 60 percent wage cut for its 33,000 unionised workers in the US and has gutted pensions, health benefits and working conditions. Twenty-one of its 29 plants are being sold off, closed or relocated.

The struggle in Spain is led primarily by the CC.OO union associated with the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and the CGT, and has been conducted undemocratically by the union bureaucracy.

There are two factors, however, that could lead to a rank and file led militant revitalization of the strike. All three shifts have been combined into one, bringing all the workers together at the same time every day. And at the end of June workers will receive their last month’s pay – with no redundancy or holiday pay.

Whether this will lead to increasingly radicalised strike committees, led by rank and file workers, calling for nationalisation of the plant - remains to be seen.