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Framing labor militancy and political exchange in a Spanish Catholic trade union: the Autonomous Union of the Vine in Jerez (1979–1987)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2020

Beltrán Roca Open the ORCID record for Beltrán Roca [Opens in a new window]  and
Eva Bermúdez-Figueroa
Beltrán Roca
Affiliation:
Universidad de Cádiz
Eva Bermúdez-Figueroa
Affiliation:
Universidad de Cádiz
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Abstract

This article examines the evolution of the Autonomous Union of the Vine (Sindicato Autónomo de la Vid [SAVID]), a radical wine industry union that operated in the Jerez area (Spain) between 1979 and 1987. The SAVID was born as a result of a series of internal conflicts and splits in the trade union Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), which was founded by Christian groups that were influenced by self-management ideas in the province of Cádiz during the 1970s. Drawing on the life stories of two union members, this article analyzes the creation, evolution, and decline of the SAVID labor union of the sherry wine industry in the Jerez area, which can be categorized as a paradigmatic case of “militant particularism.” The biographical narratives of the union members make the identification and analysis of factors involved in both the rise and the decline of this trade union possible. These narratives will also help in contesting the dominant narratives on the role of the trade union movement and the radical Left during the Spanish Transition by providing empirical evidence of labor militancy on a local scale.

Information

Type
Labor Activism Under Neoliberalism
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 98: East Europe and the Troubled Memory of “The Worker” / Labor Activism Under Neoliberalism / Lines of Labor, Lines of Production , Fall 2020 , pp. 99 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2020

Introduction

This article examines the evolution of the Autonomous Union of the Vine (SAVID), a radical wine industry union that operated in the Jerez area (Spain) between 1979 and 1987. The SAVID was born as a result of a set of internal conflicts and splits from the trade union Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), founded by Christian groups that were influenced by self-management ideas in the province of Cádiz during the 1970s. Drawing on the life stories of two union members, this article analyzes the creation, evolution, and decline of the SAVID labor union of the sherry wine industry in the Jerez area. The SAVID can be categorized as a paradigmatic case of “militant particularism,”Footnote 1 which is understood as a form of struggle deeply rooted in particular places and times that does not develop into a broad-based political movement. The biographical narratives of the union members make the analysis of the way in which activists framed their militancy and the identification of the factors that intervened in both the rise and the fall of this trade union possible. Although dominant historical accounts represent the Spanish Transition as “exemplary” due to the “responsible” attitude of most political forces and major labor organizations, a growing body of literature highlights how this narrative has silenced the revolutionary aspirations of vibrant social movements and radical unions that were especially important in determinate territories and industries.Footnote 2 In this sense, the life stories of the activists will contribute to an understanding of the unexplored practices and discourses of radical unions that had relevance in certain geographical places and moments, and that opposed the prevailing moderate and conciliatory line of major trade unions during the Transition.Footnote 3

A life history can be defined as a “self-biographical account, collected by the researcher by means of successive interviews with the goal of showing the subjective testimony of a person, that reflects both the events and the assessment of such person about his/her own existence.”Footnote 4 Such a history is more than a mere collection of individual, isolated facts since the narratives of the interviewees reflect at the same time both the dialectical power relations and the truths in dispute within a given society. This research technique was selected for this study because it allows us to combine historical depth and ethnographic detail.Footnote 5 It is a privileged tool for studying social memory and exploring framing processes (identities, values, political subjectivities) that, in this instance, played a key role in collective action.Footnote 6

The accounts of two union members, José María Gaitero and José Pérez Gil, were selected due to the clarity with which they described the development and identity of the SAVID and due to their key positions during the origins, main struggles, and extinction of the union. Both were trained in the Catholic workers' circles of Jerez during the late dictatorship. They joined the USO, and then were expelled together with all fourteen federations of the province of Cádiz in 1979. In 1980, they founded their own union, the SAVID, and actively took part in the industrial actions of the wine industry of Jerez. José María Gaitero represents the sector that opted for merging with Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) after the SAVID disappeared in 1987, and José Pérez Gil represents the sector that decided to join the anarcho-syndicalist CNT.

This article begins by exhibiting the theoretical framework that will be employed to study the labor union: the intersection between political exchange and frame analysis. Next, it describes the historical and political contexts that frame the birth, growth, and decline of the SAVID. Then, the manuscript describes the life stories of two union members. Finally, it discusses the central elements of the identity of the SAVID and the perceptions of the members of this influential yet often ignored organization in the Jerez area.

The intersection between political exchange and frame theory

The theory of political exchange has demonstrated its scientific usefulness for the analysis of the relationships between trade unions and political power, especially within the European context.Footnote 7 This framework was initially developed by Pizzorno,Footnote 8 who made reference to the exchange between government, which had resources, and other actors, such as trade unions, which had the power to challenge the social order. In the labor market, which Pizzorno highlighted, one can find three types of exchange: individual exchange, which is between an employer and an employee; collective bargaining; and the political exchange that takes place when the state becomes a part of the negotiations and regulates certain aspects in order to ensure social peace. The intervention of trade unions increases the bargaining power of the workers in these types of transactions.Footnote 9

In determinate contexts (especially in post-World War Two Europe), a good number of trade union strategies were oriented toward political exchange, in many cases at the expense of other endogenous sources of power.Footnote 10 In the Spanish case, there are numerous analyses of the role that the labor movement played during the political transition that explain the behavior of the major unions—Workers’ Commissions (CCOO), which was linked to the Communist Party, and the General Workers’ Union (UGT), which was linked to the Socialist Party—from the perspective of political exchange.Footnote 11 According to this approach, the main labor organizations agreed to participate in political exchange with the government and the employers’ organizations.Footnote 12 In this manner, both unions obtained institutional recognition and support, such as being allowed to participate in consultation institutions, receiving public funding for their activities, and receiving funds for workers’ training. This resulted in a “competitive corporatist” system that combined weak welfare policies and tripartite structuresFootnote 13 with low salaries and labor deregulation in order to compete with other newly industrialized countries in the international market.Footnote 14 In addition, during the first years of the Spanish Transition, the way in which the trade unions took part in the political exchange was mediated and reinforced by the political parties with which those unions had historical links: the Communist Party, in the case of the CCOO, and the Socialist Party, in the case of the UGT.

The perspective of political exchange, however, is not sufficient to understand all the dimensions of the labor unions’ behaviors. One limitation is that very often, these approaches have focused on the role of the major unions, ignoring the fact that in certain moments and geographical areas, the radical LeftFootnote 15 and revolutionary unions played an essential role.Footnote 16 Another limitation of this perspective is that trade unions tend to be represented as homogeneous entities exempt from internal conflicts and tendencies. Consequently, this perspective omits a substantial dimension of political exchange: the reference frames of labor activists, who influence the types of relationships that exist between union leaders and the rank and file. Thus, attention must be paid to the relations between leaders and members and to the perceptions, worldviews, and work cultures of union militants since they have a critical impact on the role of the leaders and their attitude toward the state and the employers by favoring or blocking potential social partnerships and political exchanges.Footnote 17 According to Darlington, industrial action is not only the result of the context of political economy and industrial relations; subjective agency (such as left-wing activists, ideologies, and leadership) also has a key role in generating a sense of injustice that leads to collective mobilization.Footnote 18 The starting point of this article is that trade union identities—and within them, ideological assumptions—are essential to understanding collective action.Footnote 19 The ideas that union members have regarding political exchange, the state, capitalism, and the role of trade unions have a great impact on their expectations for union leaders and on the construction of frames by which certain decisions are supported and others are rejected.

Hence, an essential tool for studying the identities of labor organizations is frame analysis, or frame theory, as proposed by Snow and Benford. Every collective action produces what Snow and Benford call “frame alignment,” or framing—that is, the process by which individual interests and perceptions connect to interpretative orientations, goals, and actions of social movement organizations, producing congruence and complementarities.Footnote 20

The biographic method is a privileged instrument for the study of such frames. Following the outline proposed by Snow and Benford,Footnote 21 this article will focus on three essential elements of every framing process: 1) the diagnosis of the problems and blame assignment; 2) the design of solutions and the formulation of strategies and tactics to achieve the those solutions (including the representations of union activists on political exchange and “union autonomy”); and 3) the motivation of social actors to participate in collective action (including political ideologies and religious beliefs).

This article on the Autonomous Union of the Vine aims to deepen knowledge on the role of the trade union movement during the Transition in Spain. For this purpose, the article will not only provide information about a labor organization influenced by Catholic and self-management ideas that has not been studied in any previous research but will also study the cultural frames on which the union's collective action was based and the union's connection with political exchange, drawing on the biographical narratives of two trade unionists. This approach will contribute to identifying the factors behind the creation, growth, and disappearance of this radical union.

Context: Social pacts and dissident Catholicism in the Spanish Transition

As Pamela Radcliffe has argued, the rise and plurality of social protest during the late Francoist period in Spain can be seen as a multifactor model.Footnote 22 In general terms, the rise of social conflict can be understood as the result of a combination of decisions made by the elite and strategic choices made by grassroots movements. A significant portion of grassroots movements at that time were connected to the Catholic Church. Although the Catholic Church was initially a key ally of the Francoist regime in Spain throughout the dictatorship (1939–1975), a strong political opposition gradually consolidated within Catholic sectors. The Second Vatican Council, held between 1962 and 1965, had a deep impact on the Spanish Catholic Church.Footnote 23 A good portion of the struggle against the dictatorship and in favor of social democratization took place within the church. Parishes and convents used to host labor meetings, protect demonstrators, and store propaganda with the support of progressive bishops, priests, and nuns. Catholics, especially those involved in certain currents and organizations, played a critical role in the remaking of the workers’ movement in Spain. It can be said that a sector of Spanish Catholics redefined their religiosity in terms of political militancy, using different economic, cultural, and symbolic resources to promote forms of direct democracy among civil society and oppose the dictatorship.Footnote 24 Thus, for example, in 1946, the Workers’ Brotherhood of Catholic Action (HOAC) was founded after a decision of the Catholic hierarchy to respond to the growing disaffection of the workers with the political system and with existing socioeconomic problems. In addition to critiquing the regime by means of political propaganda, the HOAC's mission was to support the creation of a Christian-oriented trade union independent from the Francoist regime following the model of democratic unionism in other countries, such as the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT) and the General Italian Confederation of Labor (CGIL).Footnote 25 With the same mission, though with a focus on young workers, the Spanish Catholic Church created and funded the Catholic Workers’ Youth (JOC) in 1951; the JOC would work in cooperation with HOAC, although the former would experience numerous crises and transformations. In the 1960s, the HOAC and JOC militants contributed to the creation of clandestine trade unions—mainly the USO but also the Workers' Commissions (CCOO). The USO ideology was strongly anticommunist but advocated for Christian and socialist ideas inspired by the Yugoslavian self-management model.

The National Plan of Economic Stabilization of 1959 and the incorporation of technocrats of the Opus Dei into the Francoist GovernmentFootnote 26 implied a certain openness in the regime and, together with the Collective Bargaining Law of 1958, fostered a political opportunity structure for the creation of clandestine trade unionism. On the one hand, the Francoist Regime softened its repression strategy in order to create a “democratic” international image that favored external economic and political relations.Footnote 27 On the other hand, the possibility of bargaining at different scales led many workers to become involved in labor activism.Footnote 28 The USO and CCOO took advantage of this situation and adopted the strategy of infiltrating the Francoist “Vertical Union,” which was not exactly a mechanism for workers’ representation but rather a structure of the state in which employers and employees could negotiate about working conditions. Despite the limited character of the Vertical Union, the strategy was a success because the clandestine unions were able to get resources and use official challenges to undertake industrial action and defend workers’ interests in collective bargaining, avoiding additional repression.Footnote 29

The death of the dictator in 1975 opened up a new opportunity. The different political forces began a set of negotiations to agree on a political transition and measures of economic liberalization. In 1977, trade unions were legalized, including the historic General Workers’ Union (UGT), which was linked to the Socialist Party (PSOE), and the anarcho-syndicalist National Confederation of Labor (CNT). Both had previously operated as underground movements, locating their leadership in Toulouse (France) during the dictatorship, but their refusal to participate in the Francoist workers’ structures impeded their ability to achieve the scope of the USO and CCOO, the latter of which was linked to the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and completely detached from the USO for that reason in 1968.

The 1970s was a period of agitation and political mobilization for workers in Spain.Footnote 30 The number of demonstrations and strikes skyrocketed. Trade unions played a key role in the struggle for democracy and against dictatorship. The Moncloa Agreements in 1977 are frequently seen as a milestone in the sense that they mark the beginning of a set of social pacts and legislations that ended up configuring a model of labor relations based on political exchange through social partnership.Footnote 31 In this exchange, trade unions received institutional recognition and power resources in return for attenuating labor and social conflict, keeping such conflict within limits that were acceptable to employers and political institutions.Footnote 32

In this context, political parties’ support for trade unions became a strategic advantage. The new framework of labor relations was characterized by the recognition of trade union pluralism (partly in order to respond to the demand of existing unions and political forces, and in contrast to the corporatism framework of late Francoism), but it included a set of mechanisms for selecting the most representative unions. Political support was essential within this framework. The CCOO had the support of the PCE and had thousands of labor activists who gained tremendous experience and prestige during the dictatorship and led the struggle against the regime. The UGT was initially a secondary factor, but thanks to the support of the PSOE (which won the general elections in 1982) and the German social democrats, it became the second largest trade union.Footnote 33

One of the most intense and constant internal debates in the USO was the issue of union autonomy and the unions’ relationships with political parties. Labor autonomy became one of the USO's main identity signposts.Footnote 34 Its bylaws, for example, forbade union representatives from being representatives of political parties. Autonomy, together with the idea of “trade union unity,” was the object of internal disputes and splits. In relation to the idea of “unity,” the founding statement of the USO pointed out that the union was expected to disappear in order to create a Great Democratic Labor Union of Workers. The idea of unity was also manifested in participation in certain structures for the coordination of different labor unions that were created to promote the articulation of class unionism. This was the case for the CCOO before 1968 and for the Labor Unions Coordinating Committee (Coordinadora de Organizaciones Sindicales [COS]) of 1976, which did not have much impact.

The pluralist trade union system designed by the political elite in Spain, however, undermined the translation of these USO principles into practice, favoring ideological, programmatic, and strategic dissensions among the militancy. Thus, in 1977, a split took place in which a good portion of the members that favored integration with the UGT left the USO and joined the socialist union, alleging that they were acting in accordance with the principle of “labor unity.” In October 1977, the USO celebrated an extraordinary congress reaffirming its independence from the UGT and elected Manuel Zaguirre as its general secretary.

In 1978, led by Manuel Zaguirre, the activists tried to reorganize the union and reestablish its identity and values, which caused new internal tensions.Footnote 35 One of the most controversial decisions, incorporating independent representatives, was approved in the 8th Confederal Council. This decision was perceived by the union ranks as a strong move by the right wing, as many of these independent members belonged to conservative right-wing parties and the former “Vertical Union.” Thus, the union split into two groups: a moderated one pleading for social agreement and maintaining relations with all of the democratic political forces by becoming a bloc with the UGT; the other adopting a more critical attitude with a substantial socialist self-management component (some of the members of this group were related to the publishing house ZYX).Footnote 36 It must be emphasized that one of the bastions of the USO in Spain was the province of Cádiz, where a strong working-class movement operating inside the Catholic Church, with leaders such as Esteban Caamaño and Isidoro Gálvez, emerged. As an example, between 1973 and 1983, seventy percent of registered partnerships were members of this union, according to official data from the Province Civil Government.Footnote 37 At the time, self-management was favored by the majority of members in the province of Cádiz, and there was a call from the executive board for the expulsion of the Cádiz portion of the federation from the USO.

Led by José Corell at the state level in March 1980, a faction of the union abandoned the organization because of the confrontation with union leadership over integrating into the CCOO. Some groups in the self-management sector from the USO refused to be part of the CCOO. These activists established and promoted the CLAT (Free and Autonomous Workers’ Confederation) in the Sherry Triangle, where the main trade union was the SAVID. The SAVID was developed in the Sherry Triangle and achieved a hegemonic position in the winery sector, an industry that employed approximately eight thousand workers in the city of Jerez alone.Footnote 38

The life stories of José María Gaitero and Pepe Pérez Gil, presented in the following section, will help us analyze the motivations behind Catholic autonomous labor militancy in that period. The stories will also contribute to an understanding of the different trajectories of this radical militancy once the SAVID disappeared in 1987.

The life of José María (Pepe) Gaitero, apostle of the workers' cause

Pepe Gaitero was born to a working class family in 1942 in a traditional Jerez village marked by the predominance of large wine firms that employed, directly and indirectly—by means of associated industries—a great portion of the population. His father was an arrumbador (a specialized wine cellar worker), and his mother was a housewife. The couple lived with their six sons and daughters in a humble condominium, and Pepe affirms that his upbringing raised his social and political consciousness. His father, a republican, influenced him in “refusing the dictatorship and embracing the struggle for a free society.” Pepe highlighted the importance of having read Van der Meersch.Footnote 39 The exploitation of the apprentices in Van der Meersch's novels stirred his curiosity. However, the Christian movements of the mid-1950s defined his need to struggle for a better world since those Catholic circles demanded that their members be active for the cause of social justice (what Pepe called his “worker apostolate”). He explained that this vision of Catholicism was particularly strong among a sector of the youth in Cádiz:

[Membership in this Catholic circle] from the apostleship…carried the beginning of workers’ awareness. The methods I deeply sustained and upheld about my history of education were to see, to judge and to act. Narrate a fact, a conflict. Make a moral, evangelical, and personal judgement and make a commitment. What to do in that situation. Then, I think it configured a whole young generation with an attitude of commitment to change the society.…In Jerez, or in the province of Cádiz, it configured a great young workers’ movement that was willing and prepared to change the world.

In Jerez, the introduction of the JOC, and later HOAC, gave birth to the emergence of an important young community that would be highly political and socially engaged in the future. The community began acting through the protection of certain worker priests who protected them in this clandestine struggle from inside the religious organizations, thus avoiding Franco's repression. Nevertheless, the conflict within the Catholic Church with sectors related to the dictatorship was clearly visible.

Sure, the church was the only place where we could get together and also generate awareness, a sense of justice, the rights, the dignity of people. … It is also true that within the church we had many enemies.

Pepe's militant experience during the clandestine struggle was truly hard, as he was arrested several times and was both held in the police station but sentenced to prison:

I was first in the police station in 1966, just around the first raid carried out against unionism in this country, against the USO, where there they caught Esteban Caamaño, Juan Conde and my brother, Ramón Gaitero. They took me as a hostage because they didn't know exactly if I advocated for it. But, just imagine how surprising it was that my own brother was a founder of the USO and I didn't even know it. They caught me because in the first police interrogations they [those who had been arrested] didn't say a word, and threatened my brother, telling him they would come after me. And so they did come to arrest me at work from the cellar and took me to a ramshackle room they called the jail/dungeon. I was happy there (ironically) because they wouldn't question me but I suffered isolation, abandonment [and] had to live in an inhumane situation, the fear of being questioned about what I knew. … Yes, the fear, and sometimes I cried. I had to spend day and night using a cement ledge as a bed, and pissed on the floor, as they didn't even let you out for a piss.

By the time parliamentary democracy was established, the USO had generated an internal discussion about the possibility of a union involving all trade unions, which materialize in the form of the COS (Unions Organization Coordinator) They openly supported this alliance as a strong way to advocate the rights of the workers, always in an assembly-style system.

Underground union activity began in the 1960s, at which time some of the forces opposed to the regime, including the HOAC, USO and PCE, adopted the strategy of being part of the Vertical Union, taking advantage of the channels opened by the regime itself but trying to launch the mobilization of workers and political awareness from there. In the case of Pepe, belonging to these organizations began because of his own brother, Ramón Gaitero, who implemented the JOC in Jerez and was one of those arrested in 1967 when the Public Order Court judged the trade unionists, including the founders of the USO:

There was that raid, and the Public Order Court, which was set up to prosecute against the regime, for the first time judged trade unionists, including the founders of the USO. There were these three plus more from Madrid and Bilbao. I don't remember all their names, but I know that the lawyers were Joaquín Ruíz Jiménez, Jose Maria Bandrés and some other lawyers from the Christian Democracy.

With the arrival of parliamentary democracy, the USO generated debate about the possibility of a union between the different trade union forces, which was embodied in the Labor Unions Coordinating Committee (COS). They openly supported the union as a stronghold for defending the rights of workers but only through an assembly system. However, this union merger process was never fully completed, although there were different episodes in which some of the union members, especially of the USO, were integrated with other trade union organizations.

Pepe was a member of the USO until 1978, when the province of Cádiz was expelled from the union following a conflict with the Executive of the State for the defense of independence against political parties, the state, and the church. Pepe interpreted the expulsion from the USO in the following way:

[Zaguirre proposed making] an alliance with the Belgian and Dutch Christian democracy, that here this possible party of Christian democracy is the UCD. Let us make this alliance [so that] we are all [unions, the USO, CCOO and UGT] on equal terms. Then some of us here from Cádiz warned this man, [saying], “In Cádiz we have always defended union autonomy as a strategic weapon of loyalty to the workers' movement against church, parties, or any strange power that does not emanate from the assembly.” Then we told Zaguirre, “If you're going to cancel it…Cádiz is leaving.”

Cádiz and Valencia had the largest influx of militants from the USO, and was ideologically very well developed and with a lot of implantation…and, well, things [laughs] I learned later, because they did not let me know and did not tell me anything, but I had been expelled from the union.

From that moment on, Pepe intended to continue the union struggle, but through another instrument, another platform that many of the previous USO militants joined. In 1979, Pepe founded, together with his brother, Ramón Gaitero, Pedro de Tenam and Juan Conde, the Free and Autonomous Workers’ Confederation (CLAT), from which several trade unions emerged, including the SAVID and others in the metal sector, construction, etc.

The SAVID was constituted with an identity very similar to that of the USO: independent, autonomous, and self-managed, with an assembleist structureFootnote 40 that worked for eight years and had the largest number of affiliates in the region's wine industry. The union had approximately 1,800 members at its peak. For example, ten of the seventeen union representatives of the negotiation commission for the vineyard agreement of the Marco de Jerez were members of the SAVID, leaving the CCOO and UGT in a clear minority.

The strike was the central element in their repertoire of collective action. The great strikes of 1983 and 1987 stand out. The wineries were well spread out across the geography of Jerez, so the trade unionists said that they developed coordination and communication techniques through the use of walkie-talkies and a newsletter that was prepared at night and distributed the following day to keep the minds of workers and families on ongoing strikes that simultaneously left them without resources and kept them informed about what was happening in each workplace. In addition to pickets, they intelligently established permanent worker assemblies at the doors of the warehouses that generated the information that was to be coordinated. Additionally, in the 1987 strike, women played a central role in maintaining the pickets at the entrances to the wineries.

So how could the strike be maintained? I'll tell you that the strategy was wonderful in those days. It has always been said that the workers' picket was a violent picket. … And we said, we are not going to picket, we are going to make permanent assemblies. The same as companies do lockouts. These permanent assemblies will be established on the outskirts of the main door of each warehouse…and that was very vital to keep us coordinated, informed of all the people and the working force always … and with a newspaper and with a radio that we had, and remember, a radio that connected with a frequency … and also with portable radios … there was usually one of those radio transmitters in each booth.

Pepe remembered how they tricked the police, who thought that the radio frequency had been intercepted, to go to a point in the city while the picketers were actually moving to a cellar at the other end of Jerez:

Here's an anecdote. We were going to boycott a vineyard, and on the radio, we agreed that all the picketers should go on the road from the Port to the vineyard…They are pressing grapes and they are storing them. The work of the arrumbadores [one of the most qualified professions in the industry] is being done by people who are not arrumbadores; they are replacing the strikers’ positions. After an hour, we had every car of the Civil GuardFootnote 41 on the road from the Port to the vineyard, because we had everyone controlled from everywhere. In this instance, we marched peacefully to the Devil's Vineyard from the highway of Seville, relaxed. There, we entered with the picketers and there were people who did barbarities but truthfully, they deserved it. They had stored some stems and grapes. They had been cut legally, because the vineyard workers were not on strike, but the storage of them, according to our collective agreement, must be carried out by professionals of the guild of the vine sector and not the workers. So things like that we did to the civil guard.

Another action was to pour chemicals into the grape cargo so that it would be useless and could not become wine. Pepe justified this action because it was an illegality that counteracted the illegalities perpetrated by the bosses:

Invalidating this grape was an illegality, but they were fighting another illegality. For example, grapes cut here on the road to Trebujena [a town in f el Marco de Jerez] were taken to Cordoba, where they were pressed with the commitment of the Regulatory Council that the entrepreneurs dominated and then labeled as wine from Jerez. This broke the appellation of origin. Then we said, an illegality for another illegality. One truck was forced to dump its load and another had Zotal sprayed all over it.

In this last strike, a decisive factor was involved: the winery Domecq stopped paying the retirement system pension of the sector, called Montepío de San Ginés de la Jara, for the retired workers (many of whom were parents of active workers). This radicalized the action of the workers and extended the scope and solidarity of the conflict to the whole society of Jerez:

That is true that it can erupt into violence, but as I said, it was not violent. I checked with my father. He had been working for 40 or 50 years in Williams' cellar, had a pension, like Millán's grandfather. … He had a pension he had earned, and now the employer, on his own, took away the pension when it was not agreed upon by the collective. On their own, they cut the Montepío San Ginés quota. The strike was also because of that. … They took the pensions from the pensioners … and I said it several times publicly: these beasts have not fallen because we are warehouse workers because our parents were cellar workers and now they are attacking our parents, and what it brings is that they are involving their workers. It was something that was not thought about. … That is, there was a very strong parent-child relationship in the sector, and these people did not value it. They despised them, and that was repulsive to their conscience, because how was a son going to say to his father, “I will not defend your pension.”

Despite the strength of the SAVID, the progressive decline of the wine sector in Jerez, which was the result of industrial restructuring, diminished the social power of the union and its affiliates and delegates. This weakened the SAVID's position in collective bargaining and hampered its ability to defend the interests of its members. The relations with the UGT and CCOO were not the best, in Pepe's opinion, although in rotating the charges, he maintained that good relations could be established at the union level with certain people. Unlike the other unions, the SAVID did not have legal services to advise the large number of workers who were losing their jobs. After a tough hunger strike in 1987, it was time for Pepe and the rest of his colleagues to consider the viability of the SAVID project. The union was experiencing increasing wear and tear due to the loss of employment in the warehouses and the collusion of the employers with the CCOO and UGT, which were less belligerent organizations:

Then came a time, in the 1970s, when we began to lose workers and delegates. Domecq, which had 600 workers, went down to 300. Gonzalez Byass, who had 500, stayed in the 300s and so on, so there were fewer delegates, and we already made two plays in collective agreements that we did not sign, and the CCOO and UGT considered us to be the fussy union … the bosses blatantly defended the CCOO and UGT candidacies in front of the USO and SAVID as well. … And they started to make coalitions and signed us up for two agreements without us signing them. … Among other things, we lost historical rights we had fought for that we were not willing to lose.

Added to this situation was the unity of action the SAVID had reached with the CCOO in the last strike in the sector, which favored a rapprochement between the two organizations. Pepe explained the convergence with the CCOO following the second sectorial collective agreement signed in 1987 by the UGT without the participation of the SAVID or CCOO as follows:

And it was signed with the UGT in the minority against the SAVID and CCOO. In protest, we went on a hunger strike. That brought workers to come see us, say hello … and sometimes, according to the rotating charges in the CCOO you understood each other very well. … This to me made me realize that we had something in common. The strike we did together … the agreement we made together and we had something in common. That, along with the history that I stated before, gave even more credibility to the separation of the PCE from CCOO and the fall that we were having, because we were losing delegates left and right.

The SAVID's militants were sympathetic to the rift between the CCOO and Communist Party with the leadership of Antonio Gutiérrez. The shift of the CCOO, according to Pepe, reinforced the trade union autonomy that the SAVID militants advocated for.

We also had some reflection: in the CCOO, there are not the old people of the PCE, and the CCOO is the union of today; since it does not enjoy the power, it can be more faithful, more loyal to the interests of the workers for not having politicians upstairs who are bought by power or who share power. Then, in that analysis we did [saying] that the umbilical cord was broken with the PCE, now Antonio Gutierrez was in. We said, “Well, let's go to unity.”

In 1987, the SAVID held two congresses to reflect on the future of their union. They decided to end the existence of the SAVID, and a majority of the affiliation decided to integrate into the CCOO “to defend the interests of the workers more effectively.” This was the case for Pepe. Another minority group opted for integration into the CNT. This is Pepe's account of the end of the SAVID:

In a congress, we made an analysis of the reality, how we were declining, as there were temptations from the CCOO and UGT because of the issue that they said that we were the black sheep and that we had to be removed, we were the anarchists, that we broke the mold in the sector. … We did the analysis and saw that to defend the interests of workers more effectively we cannot stand here, saying we are the most pure, the most loyal, the most trustworthy, when we are leaving workers believing the others, the leadership who, with the crumbs that they throw to them, they are going to leave us and they will be running. … We defended the union's future, we made did a realistic analysis of our sector, the decadence that there was, the loss of leadership, the workers’ rights and how they were going to stay on the union path. … And we understood that, by saving unity, we could strengthen the interests of the best workers. However, we had to swallow something … trade union autonomy with respect to political parties. We argued that it was no longer a problem because we had good information that the PCE had ceased to have influence in CCOO … which was not yet true in UGT. And, in fact, they still have it.

In this way, they put an end to the journey of the union that had been so special within the Jerez framework, without whose identity and trajectory it is not possible today to understand the characteristics of the labor movement and the political life of Jerez.

The story of José Pérez Gil, lifelong militant worker

The life of José Pérez Gil, or Pepe Peregil, as many people called him in Jerez, was undoubtedly defined by his work and union life, mainly developed in the Bobadilla Winery for twenty-seven years Born in 1944, it is significant that his childhood and youth were spent in the vineyard built in the 1950s by the Board of Home Development as part of the usual practice of the construction of entire neighborhoods for certain industrial or professional sectors. From a young age, he declared himself an antifascist after the awakening of his worker's conscience in those years despite the fact that in his family, there was no particular politicization at that time. He especially acquired political consciousness at work:

I remember listening to the Pirenaica [the clandestine radio broadcasting of the Communist Party] with my father…but the family did not. … I have always been the family freak, the black sheep. … Later in the Jerez Sawmill, an official came from France, and it revolutionized, and in some way incited my learning … and hence my struggle, antifascist and anti-Franco, all the way up to today. So I have not been a simple affiliate, but a militant worker all my life.

The union militancy of people such as Pérez Gil did not begin because of their religious beliefs, nor was their membership marked by the apostolate movements of the time; rather, it began because of their relationships with people of their own political orientation in the underground of the left wing bolstered by attending meetings and informative talks and by formative experiences in working districts and under the protection of certain religious spaces, in many cases and, in others, propitiated by companions from the sector. From that time, Pérez Gil valued union formation as one of the basic elements that make a qualitative differentiation between the workers' struggles of the past and the current syndicalism, to which we shall refer later. He said that it was autonomy that attracted him to the USO, which emphasized the importance of training by Christian militants in order to create cadres and raise awareness among workers:

Simply put, my ideological tendency was to the left. Attending clandestine meetings that were celebrated by the Coronation, and then in Gaspar Fernandez Street, a comrade of González Byass, Pedro Tena, gave us a kind of course on the history of the workers' movement. Then we faced the Vertical Union and entered the USO because of their autonomy, not dependent on a political party, very close to self-management, and precisely because the elders like Sebastian Gonzalez gave us training courses and recruited us as militants. … Those of the Church gave us facilities to meet clandestinely, and I acquired some form of conscience. Apart from that, since the time I was young, I have been antifascist and anti-Franco.

This describes the participation of all the staff of Pérez Gil's winery in an early action of resistance against the Vertical Union during the Franco period. The management of the company decided who would be candidates for the workers’ representatives; however, all of the workers, men and women alike, registered on the list of candidates as an exercise in protest.

I was not in the Vertical [Union]. I did have comrades who were, but they were not from my circle. I remember perfectly that the Vertical Union forced us to have an imposed election, and they themselves chose the [people] and I had to vote for them. The Bobadilla Winery, people with a lot of conscience, said nothing about that, and we presented all the staff for the elections, including my aunt.

Then, Pérez Gil entered the USO and presented himself at the first union elections in the Bobadilla Winery, spending many years on the Works Committee, though only three years linked to the USO. He explains this short relationship simply, saying that at that moment, a sector of the militancy was especially concentrated in the province of Cádiz and the union understood that it was losing independence with respect to political power. He claims that union leaders at the state level “were bought”:

Because the union leaders were bought, that was reason for us to leave. Because the General Secretary, Manolo Zaguirre, was bought by the European social democracy, and in Cádiz we made a very strong opposition to him, so in the Congress of Castelldefels, they threw us out. Moreover, in the Congress of Castelldefels, we sang the Cara al Sol [the Francoist anthem] to Zaguirre. They labeled us all rebels. …Yes, for confronting the show. It has always been ingrained that we were the autonomous union. We were disbanded from all of Cádiz, and from there, we created the autonomous unions, the CLAT where the SAVID came from, in the vine, graphic arts, shipbuilding sectors, etc.

Therefore, Pérez Gil joined the SAVID in 1979, militating what he understood as “an independent trade union, because it was an autonomous, anarcho-syndicalist union” that identified with left-wing ideology, albeit without being on “anyone's” transmission band [and] with no real concrete ideology, that was our ideology, not belonging to any machine.

Regarding trade unionism in the warehouses at the end of the Franco era and transition, Pérez Gil recalled the difficulty of facing a dangerous paternalism exercised by the employers using social improvements or comparative advantages (commissary, educational expenses of children—not daughters—in schools in La Salle, etc.) that saw winery workers with less union strength and less presence with respect to unions in other sectors:

The struggles in the vineyards were very difficult, because the workers in Jerez have seen a lot of young señoritos Footnote 42 and it has been very ingrained in them that these young bosses have done very little hard work and life has been handed to them. This has ruined the young masters…who are not masters; they are the employers or the owners of the company, not a master Fortunately, the word master disappeared long ago. In the nineteenth century, some believed that they were going to be buried with their masters. The people of Jerez, as a servant people, is the history where we come from.

Additionally, during the strikes, Pérez Gil participated in meetings of the company committees that later formed the committees of the strikes, passing through the assemblies of affiliates to establish joint measures of action.

Finally, when the SAVID disappeared in 1987, he decided to join the CNT along with others affiliated with the SAVID because he believed that the organization embodied his vision of union autonomy. When these workers joined the CNT sector in 1989, they were forced to change their name to the CGT by a judicial order, marking a turning point in the process of splitting up. Pérez Gil held, for many years, the position of treasurer of the local federation of the Jerez CGT:

That came because the comrades did not see a purpose and duration to the autonomous unions because we had in front of us the UGT and CCOO supported by the governments of the PSOE. Then there was an assembly and some of us went to CNT and others left … with the Trillo to the CCOO. We went to the CNT along with quite a lot of graphic arts people, teachers, wineries, etc.

Militant in an old-fashioned way, one of his major criticisms about unions today is that they have abandoned “union training,” which refers to raising political awareness of the union's members,Footnote 43 which he understood as the basic pillar of the workers' struggle and had been the origin of the militant trajectory of his entire generation. He also defended the decision-making process within the workers' organizations:

Trade unionism has stopped the training, and the style of our organizations without training is nothing. Training is the basic pillar of the organization Another thing is to be representatives of the workers or not. Of course, there are black sheep in the representatives, but in the end, the important thing is to be an assemblyman and respect the decisions of those with overalls.

Today, Pérez Gil is very pessimistic about the role of trade unions and distrusts the possibility of workers' organizations regaining the power of yesteryear:

The political class and the trade union class have both been burdened with the workers' movement, which are now trade unions; before, they were workers' organizations, because trade unionism has been demobilized today. The worker does not believe in unions because there have been many betrayals, and unions have sold out their workers, so today starting trade unionism is very difficult.

Discussion and conclusions

The biographical narratives of José María Gaitero and José Pérez Gil allow us to reconstruct the path of the SAVID from the underground union struggles during the dictatorship to the creation of the USO nucleus, which was promoted by the working circles of the Catholic Church, to the reconfiguration of the trade union movement during the Transition period, and finally, to the internal power struggles in the USO that revolved around the delimitation of its trade union identity and culminated in several processes of division.

First, these narratives contribute to an analysis of the role of Catholic institutions in framing Spanish labor activism. Regarding the religious aspect, none of the trade unionists today are practicing Catholics (unlike many other trade unionists who came from the SAVID), although they recognize the importance of Catholicism in the articulation of the workers' movement at that time. These unionists understand the progressive currents that drove the HOAC and JOC and, later, the USO and SAVID as “true moral entities” of Catholicism. The interpretation of the Gospel of this sector of the Catholic Church and the militancy that emanated from it constituted the breeding ground in which this sector of workers formed and developed significant political and union action. The leadership of worker priests such as Ramón Gaitero, the protection of the Catholic Church against state repression, and the symbolic support of certain interpretations of the religious doctrine became essential resources in the building of the SAVID. Along this line, subjects interviewed for this study underlined that Catholic activists deployed the strategy of training leaders among workers’ communities. These leaders became essential in the formation of an antagonist labor movement.

Catholicism was not the only element in the framework of these militant workers. As seen from the testimonies of the interviewees, the main enemy was the Franco dictatorship, which, together with winemaking employers, was a constant object of criticism in the practice and discourse of trade union organizations. With the end of the dictatorship, significant sectors within the trade union movement, such as SAVID activists, maintained their anti-capitalist discourse. In relation to strategy, the frameworks of these trade unionists prioritized class organization and strike action as tools for social transformation. The unionists dedicated innumerable hours of their lives to meetings, assemblies of workers, collective bargaining, reading, training, protests, and strikes. They experienced repression because they participated in sabotage and illegal actions (especially during the dictatorship).

Second, these narratives permit us to study how “autonomy” became a central element in the framework of this faction of labor militancy. A central element common to the frameworks of these activists is the defense of “trade union autonomy,” i.e., independence from political parties. It has been observed that the leadership of the USO, aware that the support given from the PSOE to the UGT and form the PCE to the CCOO constituted an advantage for these unions that was proposed at first in order to integrate into the UGT and, later, to build bridges with the UCD. Manuel Zaguirre and other USO leaders were aware that political exchange had become, in the Transition period, a key asset for trade unions If the USO was left out of that exchange, in the end, the USO national leadership thought it would occupy a secondary position within the union landscape that was being configured. However, USO leaders and members in the province of Cádiz did not agree with the organization's national leaders. The interviewed subjects highlighted how the support the CCOO received from the PCE and the PSOE's creation of the UGT, with the support of the German social democracy, was a challenge for the USO project.

The approach of the USO's national leadership to political exchange, however, clashed head on with the original identity of the organization in terms of trade union autonomy, which was especially well defended by a sector of radical Catholics rooted in the province of Cádiz This generated a strong internal conflict that resulted in the expulsion of the entire territorial structure of the USO in Cádiz in 1979. At that time, the expelled sector of the USO began a process of reflection and decided to create its own organizations that would shape their vision of unionism, including their conception of union autonomy with respect to the processes of political exchange. Thus, they created the SAVID and its federation, the CLAT.

Third, these stories highlight the impact that local context had on the success of radical militant experiences. The concentration of important numbers of workers in the two main industries in the province of Cádiz by this time—shipbuilding in the Bay of Cádiz and wine production in the region of Jerez—favored the creation of dense social relations where radical ideas could spread despite state repression and leftist leaders could band together. For this reason, the USO in this territory held radical positions against its national leadership.

The SAVID, in spite of its difficulties, managed to be the main union of the wine industry of the region of Jerez. It had approximately 1,800 members. The SAVID obtained a clear majority of representatives in the collective bargaining negotiating commission for the wine industry in the region. The growth and success of this radical union in the region was the result not only of the support of the Catholic Church and the high concentration of workers who favored the emergence of class consciousness and collective action but also of the connection of new militancy frames with collective memory. José María Gaitero highlighted the relevance of his republicanFootnote 44 family in his political awareness. In the Sherry Area, the republican tradition was mainly represented by the buried memory of anarchist and class struggle among the workers in the region, a memory that Francoist repression could obscure but not remove because, among other things, many of the new generation of activists were relatives of leftists who had been victims of various reprisals.Footnote 45

Fourth, the biographical accounts unveil the causes behind the decline of the SAVID. Despite the hegemony of the SAVID during the 1980s, the scarcity of economic resources, the decline of the Jerez wine industry, pressure of the employers—more favorable towards the representatives of the CCOO and UGT—and the growing competition from the CCOO and UGT made it difficult to maintain the trade union project of the SAVID. Another factor could have affected the end of this radical union: the NATO referendum in 1986 marked the beginning of a period of social demobilization and crisis for the radical Left.Footnote 46

Fifth, the testimonies of the trade unionists describe the crisis situation in the SAVID and contribute to identifying explanations for the integration of most of the organizations’ leaders and members into the CCOO, including: 1) the affinity with the CCOO in the fight for collective bargaining before the UGT; and 2) the perception of the SAVID's militancy under Antonio Gutiérrez's leadership in the CCOO, which was a turning point in the development of that union, as it gained autonomy from the PCE. In this way, José María Gaitero and other members of an important SAVID sector decided to join the CCOO.

Sixth, the narratives help us decipher why some of the SAVID militants joined the anarcho-syndicalist CNT. Effectively, another, numerically lower sector chose to integrate into CNT in 1987, specifically into the “renewed CNT” after the 1989 change to the acronym CGT.Footnote 47 For this segment of the CNT militants, the move represented the SAVID's superior idea of CCOO union autonomy and self-management. However, it can be said that union leadership was critical for the rank and file when deciding which union they would join. Former USO leaders such as Sebastían González had joined the CCOO years before and did not participate in the creation of the SAVID; after the end of the SAVID, most leaders, such as the Gaitero brothers, decided to join the CCOO. In contrast, Juan Conde Orellana found the CNT to be a more favorable option, and a smaller section of the SAVID membership followed him to the CNT.Footnote 48

Seventh, this study underscores why the recovery of the SAVID history is important for understanding collective action and political participation in contemporary Jerez. Today, the history of the SAVID is completely unknown in Jerez; without the contribution of this labor militancy, neither the municipal political power nor many of the characteristics of the local labor movement can be understood. Many of the people involved in this labor struggle credit Jerez as the basis of their experience and political consciousness, creating platforms and social movements that have endured over time. The story of this union remains in the memory of a number of militants, such as José María Gaitero and José Pérez Gil, and their families. Possibly, the integration of their members into other unions from 1987 is one of the reasons why the SAVID has tended to remain ignored. Many of the ideas and aspirations of SAVID militancy are currently represented, although in a different way, in the practices of the CCOO and CGT unions of Jerez. In addition, traces can be found in numerous local neighborhood, educational and solidarity associations.

List of acronyms

CCOO:

Workers’ Commissions

CGIL:

General Italian Confederation of Labor

CGT:

General Labor Confederation

CLAT:

Free and Autonomous Workers’ Confederation

CNT:

National Confederation of Labor

COS:

Labor Unions Coordinating Committee

HOAC:

Brotherhood of Catholic Action Workers

JOAC:

Youths of Catholic Action Workers

JOC:

Young Christian Workers

PCE:

Communist Party of Spain

PSOE:

Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party

SAVID:

Autonomous Union of the Vine

UCD:

Union of Democratic Center

UGT:

General Union of Workers

USO:

Syndicate Workers Union

References

Notes

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38. Catholic unionism was especially strong in the shipbuilding industry in the Bay of Cádiz and in the winery industry of Jerez during the 1970s, but also in the visual arts and banks in Jerez. In contrast, CCOO was hegemonic in other cities of El Marco de Jerez, such as El Puerto de Santa María and Sanlúcar, and among agrarian laborers in Jerez. By the end of the decade, some of the USO militants switched to the UGT or CCOO. Nonetheless, a significant number of its members attempted to maintain the original spirit of the USO in new autonomous unions, such as the SAVID and CLAT.

39. Maxence Van del Meersch (1907–1951) was a French Catholic writer who had a significant impact on Spanish progressive Catholics in the 1970s. On this author, see Renard, Paul, Maxence Van der Meersch, auteur et témoin (Villeneuve-d'Ascq Cedex, 2007)Google Scholar.

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41. The Civil Guard is a Spanish paramilitary constabulary that has historically played an important role in state repression of the labor movement. See, for example, Blaney, Gerald, “Between order and loyalty: The Civil Guard and the Spanish Second Republic, 1931–1936,” in Conflict and Legality: Policing Mid-Twentieth Century Europe, ed. Oram, David (London, 2003)Google Scholar.

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