Confederación General del Trabajo (Spain)

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**CGT**

General Confederation of Labour
Confederación General del Trabajo
Founded	1979
Members	60,000
Country	Spain
Office location	Madrid, Spain
Website	www.cgt.es

CGT demonstration in Barcelona, October 2005

The Confederación General del Trabajo of Spain (CGT) is an Anarcho-Syndicalist trade union, arisen from the 1979 split of CNT/AIT after the arrival of democracy and the following reorganization and restructuring process of the trade unions.

As the largest anarchist trade union in the world, the CGT has a membership of approximately 60,000, while representing around 2 million workers through industrial committees and collective bargaining. It is specially strong today in Catalonia, where historically, anarchism was strong. They are also strong for historical reasons in the Spanish public railroad monopoly, RENFE. They are in the industrial committee of SEAT, the Spanish car maker and the largest firm in Catalonia. However, the CGT does not hold the majority in any important industrial committee right now. They are usually seen as the far-left union in the committees and they sometimes call strikes on their own, without support of the other unions, or refuse to sign collective bargaining agreements accepted by other unions, not good enough for them. Nevertheless, they accept the result of the ensuing secret workers' vote in favour or not of the proposed agreement.

Recently, they have rejected the deal where more than six-hundred SEAT workers, or 5% of the labour force, were fired due to weak sales. CGT claims the number of their members fired was disproportionally high and claims political reasons for that. CC.OO. and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), the former communist and socialist unions, reject their claim. No precise numbers were given by the unions to support their claims. However, the fired workers can return to SEAT in two years' time if they wish to do so.

From the death of Franco and the dictatorship in Spain, anarchism has returned to union politics but with a major loss in status and influence, affecting both the CNT and CGT.

The CGT is a member of International Libertarian Solidarity and the European Federation of Alternative Syndicalism, FESAL.