Membership falls in Spanish unions


One of Spain’s two big union confederations, CCOO, has published new figures on its membership and employee support in the run-up to its four-yearly national congress which began at the end of June and concluded on 1 July. 


In a document presented to the congress, CCOO reported that it had 909,711 members in 2016, 13.4% fewer than its 1,050,269 membership in 2012. It sees Spain’s economic crisis as the main reason for the fall — in the period between 2009 and 2012 membership was growing. 


However, in a press conference before the congress, CCOO’s outgoing general secretary, Ignacio Fernández Toxo, promised that rebuilding membership would be one of the key tasks of the new leadership.


In membership terms, CCOO is of a similar size to the other main Spanish union confederation, UGT, which reports on its website that it had 931,558 members in 2016, a loss of 20.3% compared with 2102. 


But the CCOO argues that it has greater support at workplace level as indicated by the share of votes in elections for works councils. In Spain works councils are involved in collective bargaining. 


In the five years up to the end of 2016, CCOO’s figures show that it had 35.9% of the votes cast compared with 32.5% for the UGT. Other unions received 31.6%.