Spanish Dockworkers build Union without Bureaucrats

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Spanish dockworkers are proud of their radical union that they call La Coordinadora [La Coordinadora Estatal de Estibadores Portuarios - State-wide Coordination of Port Stevedores].

The union’s unique combination of hiring hall job rotation, industrial unionism, and Spanish anarcho-syndicalist assemblyism has earned it a reputation as one of the most democratic labor unions in the world.

Hiring Halls: A Weapon of Equality
Control over hiring is the main line of defense for Spanish dockers. Job dispatchers from the Office for Port Labor (OTP) use a system of rows and columns of tags which each bear a docker's number. Those at the top of the list get the first jobs. Once they are hired they are moved to the bottom of the list.

Assignment of work to each company is done with simple lottery systems, which prevents employers from holding back job requests to avoid militants. This system eliminates all favouritism when it comes to job allocation.

Egalitarianism on the docks does not stop there. These hiring halls include every single docker - rank and file members, delegados (delegates), local presidents and national union officers. Spanish dockers take pride in their system that sees elected union officers doing the same work as everyone else.

Echoes of Self-management
The anarcho-syndicalist ideas central to La Coordinadora's practice are inherited from the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). General Franco's July 1936 coup against the liberal Republican government saw Spanish workers obtain weapons and halt Franco's advance.

Members of the anarchist Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo (CNT - National Confederation of Labor) seized and ran factories and transport in Catalonia and instituted land collectivisation in Aragon.

CNT activists put into practice the theory of assemblyism - general assemblies that make all important decisions and elect recallable delegados with only the power to carry out those decisions.

In May 1937 an internal counterrevolution was launched by the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and its liberal supporters. They attacked CNT-controlled telecommunications in Barcelona and returned collectivised land to landlords. By 1939 General Franco had conquered all of Spain.

The Shroud Lifted
For decades Spanish workers were forced to join fascist company unions. Franco's death in 1975 opened a floodgate of worker protests.

The first post-Franco government announced toleration of all parties except the Communists. Dockers joined the 1976 strike to fight for the PCE's legalisation. When seven longshoremen were fired as a result, dockers asked the Communists to organise a strike to help get their jobs back. The PCE refused.

Those influenced by anarchist ideas soon won decisive influence among dockworkers and formed La Coordinadora. The dockers' union won over 99 percent support in the two largest ports (Barcelona and the Canary Islands port of Las Palmas) and 80 to 90 percent almost everywhere else.

The main union federations - the UGT (General Union of Workers) and the CC.OO. (workplace commissions) - are dominant in only one or two smaller ports.

Fight for Recognition
The new government set up a system of comites de empresa ("works committees") consisting of numerous elected delegados. Elected UGT and CC.OO. delegates would be reimbursed for 40 hours of work per month to free them to do union tasks.

Spanish port strikes erupted when the government ignored La Coordinadora's requests to reimburse its delegados. The 1980 struggle was costly. During mass picketing at Las Palmas a non-union truck driver ran over and killed Belen Maria, a striker's 17-year-old daughter. The government gave in; but, her picture still reminds everyone entering the Barcelona union office of the price the union paid for equal treatment.

The Socialist Party attacks
The Socialist Party came to power in 1982. Two years later the Socialists introduced trade union laws that discriminated against La Coordinadora and favoured the UGT and CC.OO. union federations.

Again in 1986 the dockers were singled out. A new scheme would replace the Office for Port Labor with separate agreements in each port. This plan would limit the hiring halls to providing only one of four types of docker (alongside full time company employees and casual workers).

La Coordinadora asked for media space to explain their opposition, but the media refused. Barcelona dockers protested by driving forklifts and straddles off the docks and into traffic. Police ordered them to turn around. The dockers threatened to drive the equipment into the harbour. The police backed down; the dockers tied up traffic for two hours; and Spanish media presented the union's side of the story.

Later that year the Contenemar shipping company started to sign up Barcelona dockers without going through the hiring hall. Bitter strikes soon shut down Spanish ports. Unionists broke through police lines, dragged the scabs off forklifts and threw them into the harbour. But the scabs were back under heavier police guard the next day. The union's ability to close down Spanish ports soon forced Contenemar into signing a 1987 agreement to phase out non-registered dockers.

Uncertain Future
The Socialist government was determined to push ahead with their plans - and refused to negotiate with La Coordinadora. The union then called a one-day strike on December 28, 1987. It also promised a week-long strike starting on January 4, 1988 followed by an indefinite one-hour-work-the-next-hour-don't-work strike if the Socialist government continued to be unresponsive.

The January strike proved unnecessary after the government agreed to negotiate. Many dockers felt that the agreement reached in February successfully staved off the government's attacks. Others thought it gave away too much. The union's newspaper La Estiba (The Docker) published numerous articles and letters from members who were for the agreement and from those opposed to it.

Egalitarianism in Practice
As the debate that followed the 1988 agreement shows, La Coordinadora's egalitarian principles are second to none. Their practices echo much of the old Spanish anarchist tradition.

For instance, any union member can sit in on any delegado meeting and vote. This practice has turned the state's works committees system into a vehicle for carrying out the mandates of the union's general assemblies.

The work committees system has no provision for the recall of delegados. La Coordinadora enforces the recall of delegates by simply voting them out and allowing the solidarity of the docks to convince them to step down. [Other CNT unions enforce the recall of delegates by requiring all candidates to hand over an undated letter of resignation which a CNT officer dates and hands in if the delegado is voted out].

Delegados are expected to donate all government payments to the union, which it uses to fund regional and national union meetings. Delegates who attend these wider meetings are also regularly rotated.

Another anarchist tradition sees the unions National Coordinator elected in a two part process: first, a national vote decides the port that they will come from; and then the dockers from that port elect them. This means that the National Coordinator is elected only by people who have worked alongside them.

With such fundamental decision-making power resting with the rank and file, La Coordinadora may be one of the world's most democratic unions.

Abridged from Ideas & Action #11, Summer 1989.

The full article is available at:
http://www.workersolidarity.org/coordinadora.htm