A-Infos (en) Spaine, CNT: The world of culture in defense of trade union freedoms (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Click here to see the dossier The "Six of Gijón", pending by a thread 
https://www.cnt.es/noticias/el-mundo-de-la-cultura-en-defensa-de-las-libertades-sindicales 
/#dossier ---- The undersigned, representatives of the world of culture in its 
different spheres, want to express our opinion on a series of events that we have 
learned of in recent times and that cause us enormous concern. ---- It is ironic 
that in 2022, when half a century of the so-called Process 1001, the macro-trial 
of Francoism against democratic unionism, had to mobilize again to defend union 
freedom. Six workers have been sentenced in our country to three and a half years 
in prison for unionism. We are referring to the 'La Suiza case' and the half 
dozen members of the Asturian CNT who could go to jail after a trial riddled with 
irregularities in which the Justice, represented in the first instance by Judge 
Lino Mayo Rubio and later by the Provincial Court of Asturias, showed their most 
classist and anti-union face with unjustified and disproportionate sentences that 
equated information pickets and concentrations of workers at the doors of a 
private business with coercion and threats.

The trade union freedoms won by the labor movement in the fight against Francoism 
and enshrined in our Constitution have been in decline for more than a decade. 
The combination of neoliberalism and authoritarianism that we experienced in the 
management of the previous crisis, and whose maximum expressions were article 
315.3 of the Penal Code, which provides for specific jail sentences for something 
as arbitrary as "strike picket coercion", and the 'Gag Law' led us to weaken the 
bargaining capacity of the labor movement through labor legislation, innumerable 
obstacles to union action were placed through the Penal Code and legislation on 
citizen security. It was about weakening the collective strength of workers in a 
country where the popular classes have been dragging a long wage devaluation that 
has placed us at the head of working poverty in the European Union.

Although in February 2021 a new parliamentary majority repealed the 
aforementioned article of the Criminal Code, which had already resulted in more 
than 200 legal proceedings against trade unionists, the judges who judged the 'La 
Suiza case' that year acted as if such had not happened. thing, equating union 
action with coercion and denouncing abusive labor practices with slander. All of 
this in the knowledge that in a business environment as hostile as the hotel 
industry, where union activity is especially difficult, the working class can 
basically only resort to the 2 information campaign to defend themselves against 
abuses, assert their rights and force to comply with systematically violated 
labor agreements.

The threat that six workers will go to prison is not a trivial matter. Set a 
dangerous precedent for the exercise of union activity. Something as serious as 
trade union freedom is in danger and we don't care what the initials of the 
condemned are. It is an attack on all of us who make a living from our work and 
need and demand that it be work coupled with rights. As workers in the world of 
culture, we call on all trade union organizations, social movements, NGOs, 
left-wing political formations and the whole of progressive public opinion to 
mobilize in defense of these six condemned workers. We ask the Supreme Court to 
review the sentences and the PSOE-UP government and the parties that support it 
in Congress to speed up parliamentary activity for the repeal, once and for all, 
of the 'Gag Law'.

https://www.cnt.es/noticias/el-mundo-de-la-cultura-en-defensa-de-las-libertades-sindicales/
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