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STRIKES

Spanish truck drivers’ strike continues as food shortages hit consumers

Indefinite strike action by Spanish truck drivers is starting to affect the consumer, with supermarket shelves bare heading into the weekend and uncertainty about when it will change.

Published: 18 March 2022 17:57 CET
Spanish truck drivers' strike continues as food shortages hit consumers
A line of trucks is seen in a street during a demonstration called to protest surging fuel prices, in the Spanish city of Pamplona on March 15, 2022. - Photo: Ander Gillena/AFP

An open-ended strike called by Spanish lorry drivers over sky-rocketing fuel prices earlier this week has put Spanish supply chains under stress and left several sectors struggling to cope.

And now, as the week comes to a close, the supply chain issues are starting to affect the consumer as supermarket shelves are becoming bare. On Thursday and Friday there has reportedly been a lack of fresh produce across Andalusia, and similar problems are expected across Spain if the strike continues.

The industrial action is also starting to have a noticeable impact in bars and restaurants, where deliveries for fresh products simply haven’t arrived, according to the Hospitality employers’ association of Spain.

It is believed losses to the food supply chain from one just week of strike action alone already amount to €600 million.

The strike action was called by a small drivers unions in protest against the crippling petrol prices affecting Spain and the rest of the world. By Wednesday, it had mushroomed into multiple roadblocks and protests, mainly focused on the country’s ports as well as industrial and commercial zones.

READ MORE: Spanish government vows to lower energy prices

Since the end of last year, social discontent has been simmering in Spain over inflation and rising utilities bills, the former jumping to 7.6 percent in February, the highest level in 35 years.

It  has prompted UGT and the CCOO, Spain’s two biggest trade unions, to call for a national strike on March 23rd.

However Spain’s main business lobby CEOE and CEPYME, which represents small and medium-sized enterprises, said such “violent and anti-democratic acts” are “causing serious harm to the supply chain in industry, business and the food sector” as they try to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The government has also called for an end to the strike. “We are seeing acts of violence by a minority who are blocking other truckers working to ensure the supply of foodstuffs and other primary materials at a very difficult moment,” tweeted government spokeswoman Isabel Rodriguez.

The Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, claimed later in the week that the government will never negotiate “with a group of radicals.” The PSOE-led coalition government attracted widespread criticism for its handling of the Cádiz metalworkers strike last November, and will be keen to avoid another political own-goal like the one it suffered when it sent a tank onto the Cádiz streets to deter striking workers.

The government is keeping over 23,000 police officers ready to guarantee the continuation of supply chains and act in the event of possible violent pickets.

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SPAIN EXPLAINED

Why the Basque Country is the strike capital of Spain

Around half of all strikes in Spain take place in the Basque Country, but it wasn't always that way.

Published: 28 March 2024 14:48 CET
Why the Basque Country is the strike capital of Spain

Though airport workers are currently striking in Valencia and Madrid, and trade unions have played a leading role in the farmers’ protests across the country in recent weeks, there’s a specific part of Spain that stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to industrial action — the Basque Country.

According to figures from the Basque government’s Labour Relations Council (CRL), in 2023 almost half (46 percent) of the total strikes called in Spain took place in the Basque Country.

In 2022, that figure was 50.36 percent. That is to say, a region with less than 5 percent of the country’s total population had half of its strikes. More specifically, 342 of the 679 strikes that took place in Spain in 2022 were in the Basque Country alone, according to data from the Ministry of Labour.

READ ALSO: What are the pros and cons of life in Spain’s Basque Country?

What explains this phenomenon? Is there an underlying explanation? Are the Basque people particularly organised or more radical than other Spaniards?

Part of the explanation for this trend comes from the fact that Basque trade unions have grown, or maintained, at least, as union activity has declined in the rest of the country.

As Spanish trade unions slowly began waning in power and membership over the years (like in many countries around the world) the Basque Country became a hotbed of trade unionism activity and industrial action in Spain from the early-2000s. In more recent years, the 2020s in particular, the proportion of strikes in the Basque Country versus the rest of Spain has grown ever higher due to an overall decrease in the number of strikes around the rest of the country.

Jon Las Heras, Professor of Political Economy at the University of the Basque Country and expert on Basque unions, says that this high rate of strikes compared to the rest of Spain is due, above all, to the trade union model and strategy adopted by the region’s two major unions, Eusko Langileen Alkartasuna (ELA) and Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak (LAB).

“ELA and LAB have formed a ‘counter-power’ bloc in opposition to CCOO and UGT [the traditional, major unions in Spain] that are more prone to engage into social dialogue,” Las Heras argues in his paper Striking to Renew: Basque Unions’ Organising Strategies and the Use of the Strike-Fund.

This strategy, he argues, is “based on organising workers ‘deeply’ – especially with ELA’s recurrent use of a strike-fund that fosters membership participation and affiliation through confederal solidarity.”

In short, whereas Spain’s larger national unions are, Las Heras suggests, more inclined to dialogue to resolve industrial disputes, Basque unions prefer more direct action. “This has produced very high strike rates since the 2000s, perhaps the highest in Europe,” he adds.

It is worth considering that the Basque Country, in addition to effectively using strike funds, is also one of the wealthiest parts of Spain. In other words, that workers in the Basque Country take home the second highest salaries in Spain on average, behind only Madrid, could mean that union members are more inclined (or have the financial flexibility) to take strike action than if they were from poorer regions such as Murcia, Extremadura and Andalusia.

READ ALSO: Why are the Basque Country and Catalonia so rich compared to the rest of Spain?

At the very least, being wealthier on average means that Basque workers can afford to stay on strike longer than workers in other parts of the country, something essential when settling disputes through industrial action.

However, trade unionists would no doubt point to their strong trade unionism as one of the reasons they are comparatively well paid, rather than the other way around.

But it wasn’t always like this. According to Las Heras, ELA, LAB and other Basque unions formerly relied on dialogue and sector-wide collective bargaining agreements, as many unions still do, but began to develop “a strategy of political autonomy and trade union action at a level closer to the grassroots” between the 1990s and the 2000s.

This came about partly as a result of changes to the labour market and industrial changes in the Basque Country (which began from the 1980s onwards, notably the types of industry and engineering in the region) as well Basque unions distancing themselves from national unions

“The rise of the second Basque union (LAB) allowed for the two Basque sovereigntist unions to form a new alliance that stood in opposition to the two main Spanish unions,” Las Herras argues.

But it’s also about strategy. Elena Pérez Barredo, Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Security in the Basque government, told La Vanguardia that the fundamental reason strikes are so common “lies in the trade union difference that exists in the Basque Country.”

“The ELA has a union strategy and culture that encourages confrontation… a very marked strategy in favour of the strike as an instrument of confrontation,” she adds.

There seem to be several plausible, inter-connected reasons that the Basque Country became Spain’s (and possibly Europe’s) strike capital.

It has strong regional trade unions that exist separately from the larger confederate national unions; these unions have effective strike funds, meaning they can strike for longer; their employees are, on average, likely to be better paid than elsewhere in Spain, meaning they could be more inclined and financially able to take strike action; and finally, Basque unions take a more direct, confrontational approach to industrial disputes, whereas other unions rely more on dialogue and border collective bargaining agreements.

Perhaps Unai Rementeria, a local Basque politician, summed it up best after widespread strike action in the region in 2019. Basque unions, he said simply, “seek permanent confrontation.”

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