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Floods in Valencia reveal the inaction of Spanish unions

Online Niel November 13, 2024

The devastating floods in Valencia, which claimed more than 223 lives, destroyed entire cities and destroyed tens of thousands of homes, exposed the bankrupt bureaucracies of the Summary-related Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) and the social-democratic unions of the General Union of Workers (UGT). .

Residents walk down a street after flooding in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

There is growing popular anger at the entire political system, from the Valencia regional government led by right-wing Partido Popular (PP) regional premier Carlos Mazón, to the National Socialist Party (PSOE)-Sumar government and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez .

Last Saturday, more than 130,000 people took part in a march, shouting “Murderers, murderers”, “Mazón, resign” and “Only people save people”. There were also signs reading “Mazón, your people reject you, neither forget nor forgive”, “We are stained with mud, you are stained with blood” and “Neither Mazón, nor Madrid, nor the Bourbons (monarchy)”. These were the largest protests in the region since the 2003 Iraq War protests.

The CCOO and UGT bureaucracies are not fighting Mazón and Sánchez, or for measures to combat climate change, but are intervening to suffocate and demobilize workers. They protect the capitalistic state’s criminally negligent response to the floods and hide their own role in what the WSWS rightly describes as social crime.

On October 29, the day the deadly floods hit Valencia, CCOO and UGT met with Mazón and Valencia’s big business platform, the Confederación Empresarial de la Comunitat Valenciana (Business Confederation of the Valencia Region) to discuss the budget regional.

In the five days leading up to the meeting, the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) issued repeated warnings of a potential strong storm, predicting heavy rain in Valencia. Hours before union officials were due to meet with Mazón, AEMET issued a red alert – the highest level – indicating extreme risks of rainfall.

Despite these repeated warnings and Valencia’s known vulnerability to flooding, especially after the 2019 floods that claimed at least six lives, the unions did not issue a public alert, call for job closures or advise people to stay at home Business continued as usual.

Instead, in front of them, Mazón denounced the measures to close the University of Valencia (UV) as “exaggerated”. Indeed, the UV emergency committee, created in 2019 just for such a storm, had sent a notice to all its students the day before, announcing the suspension of classes due to the forecast of heavy rains. This affected 50,000 students, 3,000 technical, administrative and support staff and over 5,000 teachers.

UV shutdown should be the standard response to deadly storm conditions, but it was the exception. Union officials could have summoned union delegates from factories and workplaces across the region to enforce Article 21.3 of the Occupational Hazard Prevention Act. This law provides that when “the employer does not adopt or allows the adoption of the necessary measures to guarantee the safety and health of workers, their legal representatives can decide, by majority vote, to suspend the activity of workers affected by this risk”.

To date, the number of dead workers remains unknown. Due to the criminal inaction of the union bureaucracies, hundreds of thousands of workers were forced to report to work amid the floods. Multi-billion euro retail giants including Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Pull&Bear, Lefties, Zara and La Tagliatella have decided to stay open. In the El Oliveral industrial area of Riba-roja, more than 1,000 workers found themselves trapped by rising waters.

Social media platforms such as X and Instagram were filled with videos of witnesses calling for help, with some calling emergency services to save friends and loved ones. The situation at Ikea went viral as employees and some customers were forced to spend the night in the store. More than 400 auto workers at Ford’s Almussafes plant have been locked out.

Many truck drivers were stuck on the roads: some were not rescued for days, and others died. Among the known victims were José Hernaiz, a truck driver who went missing in l’Alcúdia and was later found dead, and Bassem Zetión, whose DHL truck was suddenly overtaken by floods and remained missing.

After the disaster, as mass anger grew against the lack of preparation and Mazón’s role in downplaying storm warnings, union bureaucracies joined the rest of the political establishment to cover up their role in the social crime. Like the PSOE-Sumar government, they rejected calls for Mazón’s resignation.

They posted a joint statement four days later when Prime Minister Sánchez and Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia were pelted with mud while visiting Paiporta, one of the hardest-hit towns in Valencia, as workers chanted : “Get out!”, “Pedro Sanchez”. , where are you?” and “Killers!”

Unions said: “Without prejudice to the respective responsibilities of each level of government, the priority at this time is to unify all efforts to address the emergency.”

As anger continued to mount and hundreds of thousands of workers and their families organized in rescue and cleanup efforts, unions sponsored a 10-minute nationwide labor stoppage last Friday. It was jointly organized with the big business platform CEOE, the same business owners who forced their workers to stay at their jobs during the floods.

The next day, they refused to hold a mass demonstration on Saturday attended by more than 130,000 people. However, they suspended a planned strike in the road transport sector, arguing that transport services could not be suspended during the recovery period. I mean, it’s fine to call off strikes after a disaster, but not when transport and logistics workers are drowning in floods.