Workers' Commissions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CCOO
Image:CCOO logo.png
Workers' Commissions
Comisiones Obreras
Founded 1976
Members +1,000,000
Country Spain
Affiliation ITUC, ETUC
Key people Jose María Fidalgo, general secretary
Office location Madrid, Spain
Website www.ccoo.es
CC.OO. sticker
CC.OO. sticker

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's government, and one on June 20, 2002, against the government of José María Aznar and its plan to reform the unemployment insurance system.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


This article related to a European trade union is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
In other languages