On 20th June the fifth general strike in Spain since the restoration of
democracy in 1977 took place. It was organised by the two main Spanish trade
unions (CCOO and UGT) and other minor ones, in response to the approved
governmental decree RD-L 5/2002 “Reform of the protection of unemployment
and the basic law on employment”, approved in the 27th May
with the only favourable votes of the governing People’s Party . This strike led to the reversal of some of
the most criticised points of the new law and in that sense was quite
successful. But diverse and seemingly contradictory positions within feminism
arose in the debate. For some feminist groups one of the major impacts of the
general strike was highlighting the lack of a unitary and coherent discourse
and thus the need to start a process of reflection and discussion.
The evolution of economic policy in Spain has not differed from the
global trend towards freer markets, progressive privatisation and decreasing
Welfare State provisions. Among those increasingly deregulated markets is the
labour market (national labour markets, but not international ones, where more
restrictive migration rules are being established; Spain is relentlessly
playing its role of gatekeeper of the “nearest to Africa European
door”!). So more precarious and unsafe forms of contracting have emerged,
dismissals have been facilitated and became cheaper, unemployment protection
has been weakened, and general social protection has been damage. Through this
long ongoing process five general strikes have been organised: 20th
June 1985, 14th December 1988, 28th May 1992, 27th
January 1994 and 20th June 2002. Only the second of the first four
strikes achieved its goals, namely reversing the Plan for Youth Employment, the
defining features of which were nevertheless approved some years later The last
one was the first against a conservative government, while the others occurred
under a socialist one. It occurred in a context of progressive erosion of
remunerated workers’ rights, some of them sanctified by the agreements
reached between the Government and the two largest unions. Thus, although the
decree was what triggered the protests, other events such as unpopular changes
of the educational system and financial scandals within state agencies meant
that the climate was already created for popular unrest.
Among the most controversial aspects of the legal changes were
considerable tightening of eligibility for unemployment benefit, early retirement
and agrarian subsidies. The success of the strike in terms of the number of
participants was highly debated. Numbers
ranged from 84% according to the trade unions to the official 17%.
Nevertheless, the political effects were very important, with the dismissal of
the Minister of Labour and the recent reversal of most of the conflicting
measures.
Although responses from feminism were diverse, two main trends could be
observed[1].
The first emerges from the Women’s Secretaries of the two largest unions.
The centrepiece in their analysis is the labour market around which the
problems, solutions and ways of political response are articulated. They
highlight women’s disadvantaged position in all the variables that
measure labour achievements. This includes women’s much lower labour
market participation (female participation rate is 41,68% and male rate, 66,70)
and much higher unemployment rates (female unemployment is 16, 26% and
men’s is 7,67%; i.e. 58,38% of total unemployed are women). Also 55% of
unemployed women do not receive any benefit (versus 25% of men), women hold 79%
of partial time jobs and earn almost 30% less than men. Approved legal reforms
would undoubtedly worsen women’s already weak situation.
The proposed alternative the two main Women’s Union Secretaries is
the active seeking not only of full employment but also all jobs carrying work
security and good conditions (what they call “full high quality
employment”). In order to achieve it, three main goals should be
encouraged. Firstly, increasing women’s participation rate to the
threshold of 60%, the objective that the European Union in Barcelona Summit
proposed to all its members by the deadline of 2010. Secondly, reducing female
unemployment. And thirdly, decreasing the precariousness and temporary nature
of employment that disproportionately affects women. The achievement of these
goals would require active labour market policies, currently almost
non-existent; changes in labour market regulations, in the opposite direction
to recent trends; and the provision of public services allowing the
reconciliation of family and labour lives. All this should be accompanied by an
adequate benefit system that would cover those in unemployment and other
precarious situations, such as lone mothers. Summing up, the discourse is still
centred around the labour market, no references to the caring sphere are made
-except to show the limits that it poses to full labour market integration. The
extent to which women are able to participate in the strike is not questioned.
Women are told: “employment and social protection are your rights, do not
let them be removed”, which means, “support the strike”.
These trade unions asked feminist groups to join their manifesto without
calling for a previous debate, assuming that theirs was the political line
generally shared by most feminists. However, some feminist groups felt quite
uncomfortable with it and preferred issuing their own.
Although disagreements were diverse there were some common features. A
primary conflict was a legacy of earlier trade union consent to the previous
labour market deregulation measures and social benefits cuts. This conflict
could be linked to the progressive institutionalisation of feminism and the
increasing narrowing of trade union activities to the support of a privileged
core of workers. Within both trends, a logic of asking just for feasible
changes had become the logic of defending the rights of those already
privileged, whether women or workers.
Basic disagreements over women’s roles underlie this conflict. As
the alternative manifesto stated: “This reform is not just related to
unemployed people, it is not even just related to employment. Because it
belongs to the establishment of a model of society where the economy, free
market and corporations’ benefits are put before any human need.”
Thus the problem rests on a deeper conflict, which is the fundamental
contradiction between the logic of accumulation and the logic of care. Markets,
including labour market, operate on the basis of the unpaid work undertaken by
women. Feminist groups accuse trade unions of continuing to rely on a
“clearly masculinised conception of the labour market” which
invisibilises unremunerated work, exempts men of their responsibilities, and
avoids challenging that crucial underlying conflict.
In a society guided by the logic of accumulation, full high quality
employment is neither possible nor desirable. On the one hand, it is not
possible because of the dominant logic that is always privileged over any other
social objective. It means that any feminist discourse would be co-opted and
its rhetoric would be used in a way that markets rather than women would
finally benefit. This is the case with the debate about the reconciliation of
family and working lives. Possible ways of reconciling them include
flexibilising paid labour times, a fairer gender distribution of work, and
increasing public services to care for children and other dependents. Instead
we have seen a greater flexibilisation which serves corporations’ interests
instead of workers’ ones, an increase in private rather than public care
services; and greater differences among women. Low-income women continue to
face the problems of double burden and high and medium income women rely on the
underpaid, often illegal, immigrants’ work. The conflict between working
and family lives thus reaches a global dimension with the creation of
transnational families. Migrated women cannot care for their families (who
often remain in their home countries while some other woman –mother,
sister, any neighbour- looks after them) while their work enable a Western
woman –and of course, man- to attend her paid job. A gender
redistribution of work is still a myth. Men’s time devoted to domestic
labour has increased in seven minutes in the last five years in Spain,
according to the survey of the Ministry of Social Affairs, “Woman in
Figures, 2001”. Full employment is itself a masculinist concept, relying
on unpaid, unrecognised work. On the other hand, the undesirability of full
employment within the logic of capitalist production arises from the fact that
it would only apply to a privileged set of workers, marginalizing a whole range
of people, mainly women, immigrants and young people.
The objective of the second group of feminists is no longer full (high
quality?) employment but rather a shift in social priorities from accumulation
to the sustainability of life, where work and richness could be redistributed.
Another crucial insight is the acknowledgement that the majority of
women are excluded from generalised appeals to support the strike. Immigrants,
informal workers, highly precarious workers, housewives, self-employed, sex
workers... none of them can stop working and thus make a public statement of
their political position. A general strike, as actually conceived, is not their
political tool. And increasingly it is not many men’s adequate political
tool, as the process of feminisation of labour occurs. Nevertheless, feminist
groups supported the strike. They did this because they shared the concern of
women in trade unions’ about women’s disadvantaged position in the
labour market and the anticipated even more negative consequences of the reform
They tried to make a more inclusive appeal, making references to the other side
of a strike, which imply not consuming, not using services such as schools, the
health system an public transportation... As the Women’s Secretary of
another trade union (CGT) stated: “let’s stop all work
–productive, caring, domestic and voluntary work”. However, it did
not resolve the problem. The non-execution of a huge amount of female work is
simply not possible or could lead to negative consequences suffered only by the
workers (women) themselves. Theirs is a struggle already lost or still not
begun.
While these ideas were clear, a lack of a collective, unitary discourse
became visible. Feeling uncomfortable with official and trade union’
discourses is not enough. An example of this feeling can be found in those
feminists who firstly met to decide a common response to the strike and then
discovered that, instead of having any answer, they had lots of questions. From
there they created the so-called “Women Workers’ Laboratory
Productions”, which is a project still in its embryonic phase. They argue
that precariousness is the common factor within the heterogeneity of
women’s situations. Precariousness is a weak basis for collective
struggle because of its many negative –vulnerability, insecurity,
poverty...- and ambivalent –mobility, flexibility- implications. But some
positive factors can also be recovered through a process of resistance. So
starting from this common precarious location we should begin to share and
understand our differences in order to: “[…] escape from neoliberal
fragmentation, which divides us, weakens us and turns us into victims
[…]. We want to facilitate the collective construction of different
possibilities of living through a joint and creative struggle”.
Thus, the event of the general strike helped the feminist movement to
perceive a quite clear division of opinions. On the one hand, there are
feminists who still believe in the possibility of achieving full high quality
employment for all, both men and women. They have reasonably coherent ideas
about the problems and the concrete policies that should be implemented in
order to surmount them. On the other hand, there are feminists who highlight
the incompatibility of actual social organisation with a society/economy that
cares about life sustainability and in which all women could really be fully
empowered. Their discourse and proposals are being debated in order to
integrate these ideas that need further development.
Amaia Pérez Orozco
November 2002
[1] I will mainly refer to the context of Madrid, so different questions could arise when looking to other places, for example, where employment and feminist issues intertwine with nationalist ones.