Spanien: Massenmobilisierungen gegen das Austeritätsdiktat

Spain, together with its Southern European neighbours Portugal and Greece, is among the countries hardest hit by the ongoing crisis. The severe austerity policies introduced in 2010 have increased the economic and social problems. The trade unions and many civil society movements have been trying for years without success to mobilise against the anti-social austerity measures and the erosion of workers' rights. The evident failure of austerity has had no political consequences. The widely supported strike and protest actions tend to run out of steam and thereby further weaken the trade unions and civil protest groups. At the same time, the government has been pursuing a neoconservative counter-offensive previously unprecedented in Spanish democracy. The Spanish trade unions are now facing a difficult strategic choice: The ongoing structural economic crisis and the effects of austerity policy have eroded unions’ traditional structural, organisational and institutional power resources. Should they defend their still far-reaching institutional participation and workplace representation rights to reinvigorate them and thereby create more favourable conditions for the future, or should they build alliances with social protest groups and assume a leadership role as an extra-parliamentary opposition?