Spanish trade union prepares for change

Spanish trade union prepares for change

By Julia Hayley

MADRID (Reuter): Dwindling membership, a questionably successful general strike and a scandal over a failed housing cooperative have undermined Spain's General Workers' Union (UGT), once a cornerstone of the country's new democracy.

The 700,000-member union opens its congress -- held every four years -- tomorrow with the challenge of electing a new leader and setting the union on a new path that will restore its tarnished image.

Its leader, Nicolas Redondo, is retiring after 46 years as union activist and nearly 20 as secretary general of the UGT, Spain's second biggest union.

Redondo, 66, was a close ally of Socialist leader Felipe Gonzalez, the current prime minister, in the first years after the death of dictator Francisco Franco but he is now one of his fiercest critics.

Jailed several times in the 1960s and 1970s under Franco, Redondo formally broke with Gonzalez's Socialist Workers' Party in 1987 when he resigned his seat in parliament, disgusted by government pension reforms.

Relations have deteriorated steadily since, leading to a breakdown of labor talks late last year and a 24-hour general strike on Jan. 27.

Now Redondo and Workers' Commissions (CCOO) leader Antonio Gutierrez appear to be losing the fight over the government's labor reform laws, which are going ahead despite bitter union opposition.

Between them the two unions muster some 1.7 million votes, far below the 12 million workforce, and the new UGT leader's main task will be to restore the union's credibility as a negotiating force.

Two candidates have emerged to replace Redondo. The likely winner and Redondo's preferred successor, is Candido Mendez, the UGT's secretary-general in Andalusia. But metalworkers' leader Manuel Fernandez has won support from several big regional congresses and his own metal federation.

Mendez, 42, is a chemical engineer by training and served as a Socialist member of parliament between 1980 and 1986. In recent public statements he has taken a more liberal, less hard line unionist tone than Redondo.

Moreover he seems deeply embarrassed by the collapse of a UGT controlled housing cooperative into which many poor families had poured their savings.

"It was a serious blow to the union...We've paid in lost image, credibility and economically," he said in a recent interview. The cooperative went into receivership in December.

Cooperative members, many of whom have paid deposits of around four million pesetas (US$30,000) for unbuilt apartments, have marched through the streets of Madrid and daubed the city with posters accusing the UGT of theft.

Fernandez, 46, is a more outspoken, belligerent candidate than the corpulent, bearded Mendez.

Whoever wins will have to lead a rethink of union policy. The UGT's membership has slipped to 700,000 from around one million over the last five years.

Financial analysts say the challenge for the union, most of whose members are aging workers with long-term jobs, is to attract younger people.

Support for old-style union politics is fading, as the mixed response to the January general strike showed.

Traditional union militancy appeals less and less to urban office workers who are fast replacing industrial employees as the bulk of the working population.

"Life's going to get much tougher for the unions now that their political base and social support are waning," said economist Santiago Fernandez.

"They've failed to do much about issues like youth unemployment...they'd better bring themselves up to date."

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