Conditionality and trade union action in the promotion and defence of workers’ rights: the Spanish case

Abstract

Conditionality, among other aspects, determines that the regulatory development of the countries that make up the European Union can be carried out, as is usual in the social sphere, without the intervention, or at least minimally, of the workers’ representatives and entrepreneurs, and also from other political formations in the legislative field. Logically, this absence of social or political participation can promote response actions against them, either traditional (strikes, demonstrations, withdrawal of parliamentary support in adoption of legislative measures etc.), or new types (spontaneous concentrations in public places, general assemblies of citizens without a defined convener, appearance of social and political formations of less visible typology, or other similar ones). The financial crisis unleashed at the end of 2007 and the one derived from the health emergency situation due to the global spread of Covid-19, at the beginning of 2020, have precisely encouraged the use of conditionality in the European Union space. However, the way in which conditionality has been developed in one and another crisis in the Spanish State can be said that it has not been identical. Neither have been the reactions of social and political subjects, because if in the first crisis these subjects have experienced a reduction in their functions of participation or intervention in legislative action and in the proposal of political actions, in the second the possibilities of action have been much more significant, and also their contribution to efforts to overcome the crisis situation.