Difference between revisions of "Confederación General del Trabajo"

Revision as of 07:13, 6 October 2008

The General Confederation of Labour (Spanish: Confederación General del Trabajo, CGT) of Spain is an Anarcho-Syndicalist trade union, arisen from the 1979 split of CNT/AIT after the arrival of democracy and the following reorganization and restructuring process of the trade unions.

As the largest anarchist trade union in the world, the CGT has a membership of approximately 60,000 people, while representing around 2 million workers through industrial committees and collective bargaining. It is especially strong today in Catalonia region, where historically, anarchism had strong support. For historical reasons, the CGT is also a main player in the Spanish state railways, RENFE. It is also part of the industrial committee of SEAT, the Spanish car manufacturer and the largest company in Catalonia. Nonetheless, the CGT does not hold the majority in any important industrial committee at this moment. The CGT has been known to call for industrial action, without support of any other unions. Sometimes it had refused to accept collective bargaining agreements negotiated by other trade unions, unless these have been appoved by general secret ballots.

In that sense, the CGT has recently rejected a deal that resulted in forced redundancy for over six-hundred SEAT workers, about 5% of its labour force, due to weak sales. It also claimed that the number of CGT sympathizers who were made redundant was disproportionally high. The other two main trade unions, CC.OO. and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), rejected this claim as baseless. No precise figures were provided by any of the unions to support these claims.

After Francisco Franco's death and the end of dictatorship in Spain, anarchism made a comeback to the trade union scene, though with a major loss in status and influence in comparison with the II Republic period, affecting both the CNT and CGT.

The CGT is a member of International Libertarian Solidarity and the European Federation of Alternative Syndicalism, FESAL.

See also

Solidaridad Obrera (union)

External links

• Confederación General del Trabajo
• 'Rojo y Negro' Newspaper/Periodico CGT
• Estatutos de la C.G.T.
• Fundación Salvador Segui - Fundación de Estudios Libertarios
• The Spanish CGT - The New Anarcho-syndicalism
• Spain: CGT is now the third biggest union