The Workers' Commissions (Spanish: Comisiones Obreras, CCOO) since the 1970s has become the largest trade union in Spain. It has more than one million members and is the most successful union in labor elections, competing with the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) (historically affiliated with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party [PSOE]), with the syndicalist Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) usually a distant third.
The CCOO were organized in the 1960s by the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and workers' Roman Catholic groups to fight against the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and for labor rights (in opposition to the non-representative "vertical unions" in the Spanish Trade Union Organisation). The various organizations formed a single entity after a 1976 Congress in Barcelona.
Along with other unions like the Unión Sindical Obrera (USO) and the UGT, it called a general strike in 1976, and carried out protests against the conditions in the country. Marcelino Camacho, a major figure of Spanish trade unionism and a PCE member, was CCOO's General Secretary from its foundation to 1985 - he was elected to the Congress of Deputies in the 1977 election.
Between 1985 and 1997, the union's General Secretary was Antonio Gutiérrez; he was followed by the current secretary, José María Fidalgo, often criticized by the left wing of the union. The CCOO and the UGT, summoned three general strikes (1988, 1992 and 1994) against the economic policy of the Felipe González government, and one on June 20 2002, against the government of José María Aznar and its plan to change the unemployment insurance system.
External links
- CCOO official site.
- CCCO's Critical Sector forum
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Saturday September 06, 2008 at 19:00:05 PDT (GMT -0700)
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