Avainsana: European Union

Large retailers  in Spain should take a look in the mirror, and then start to get their labour relations act together. The recent deal with management controlled ‘trade unions’ makes bad worse for hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers already badly squeezed by the crisis.

When I was head of UNI Commerce Global Union, the labour situation in some of the department store and hypermarket companies in Spain stuck out as something of a sore thumb. Violations of workers rights and disregard for freedom of association were part of the daily lives at many workplaces.

We see the same now when large retailers have signed collective agreements with sweetheart unions to cut wages, extend working hours, and take away other benefits. Once again it is the same employers’ organisation ANGED that is there doing the job for them, influenced by the country’s largest retailer El Corte Ingles, and some others.

Sad, because in supply chain corporate social responsibility this huge department store and hypermarket retailer is one of the most active companies.

To make some of the most disadvantaged workers pay for the country’s crisis economy is highly unfair. Recently we saw reports of huge undeclared payments from large Spanish companies to leaders of the governing Popular Alliance AP party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. It is difficult to accept that at the same time workers at the lowest income levels are squeezed even more by huge and profitable companies.

The two Spanish commerce trade unions FECOHT-CCOO and FECHT-UGT estimate that the agreement signed with FETICO and FASGA could cost some 230,000 workers an average of 10 percent of their incomes. Almost all of them are low-paid and very many on temporary contracts, frequently in part- time jobs.

For many years, I worked with the Spanish unions – and also many constructive European employers – to try to change this situation and to establish normal European labour relations.

At times we made real progress. Still, the results could finally not be sustained, particularly because of the determination of a hard core of them to keep up old bad practices. Politics also played a role. It was not difficult to see the close ties between Spanish management and the party of the conservative right.

Trade unions that re-emerged in the 1970s after decades of harsh repression during the Franco dictatorship had to be stopped, that was the target. In most sectors  old organising traditions and the new political environment made this impossible. Not so in retailing which lacked strong union traditions. Here El Corte Ingles and some others moved fast to fill the vacuum left by the Francoist vertical structures, creating new ‘sweetheart ‘unions’. As large foreign retailers began entering later, they were usually pulled into the same fold.

This anomaly still exists in Spain. The two ‘yellow unions’ Fetico and FASGA cooperate openly with management and are often used by the employers as willing tools. All attempts to change this from within have decisively been cut short through management intervention, and independence-minded Fetico leaders have lost their positions. I met some of them during my UNI years, but their plans – however serious they then were – proved to be impossible to realise.

I also visited department stores and hypermarkets during works council elections and could see some of the blatant violations taking place. I saw voters intimidated, candidates put under pressure to sign off, and the polling secret violated.

Twice I witnessed harsh supervisor pressure on workplace candidates, making them break down in tears and remove themselves from the ballots, afraid of losing their jobs. The aim was to disqualify the union list through making the number of candidates fall under set limits.

In a large department store workers had to walk up through a narrow staircase to the polling station, passing groups of young men – reportedly from FASGA – in dark suits standing along the way. Voters had to pick up ballot papers from stacks on a desk where an election board was sitting, different colours for the different union lists. No wonder if many of them chose to pick up only the one with the employer’s favourite colour.

Of course, I met and saw companies and workplaces where there was a reasonably honest competition between the organisations and their candidates, also some where Fetico got the biggest support. So there is no reason that this should not work in Spain as it does in the rest of the EU?

Differences and labour conflicts between employers and trade unions are normal and acceptable, and most countries have clear rules on how to resolve them. Sometimes employers are unreasonable, and at other times trade unions are unrealistic in their demands. This is normal as well, and usually a result will finally be found – perhaps not popular with either party, but they can live with it.

We have to remember that this is not a political organisation game, but about how human beings at workplaces are treated. Pressure and intimidation of workers and workers’ representatives is not only illegal and a violation of International Labour Standards. It is also ethically and morally wrong.

I will not go into the details of the agreement itself. My view is that it is both unwise and unfair to clamp down even harder on those who are already worst hit by Spain’s economic troubles and extreme unemployment. This will not help recovery or promote the social peace and political stability that both Spain and the European Union need.

It is time to reflect and turn around the bad spiral of deteriorating labour relations in this important sector of Spanish retailing. The responsibility for this is now clearly with the employers, both domestic and foreign. They need to take steps to recall their local human resources management and this particular association to order.