CCOO and UGT’s Mass Union Model Collapses as Spain’s Industrial Base Disappears

The mass unionism inherited by CCOO and UGT from late Francoism relied on an industrial and construction base employing 36%-40% of the active population in 1975. With this labor foundation dismantled, their representation model faces a structural crisis.

The photo of the **Vigo** strike of **1972** shows thousands of industrial workers organizing under the dictatorship. This world was the social base upon which **CCOO** (Comisiones Obreras) and **UGT** (General Union of Workers) were built in the final years of Francoism.

## A country of factories that no longer exists
When **Francisco Franco** died in November **1975**, approximately **36%** of the Spanish active population worked in industry: factories, workshops, mining, and manufacturing. Including construction, the secondary sector concentrated nearly **38%-40%** of the country’s workforce.

In some provinces, this proportion approached **60%**. These were territories where the factory organized entire life: the neighborhood, the union, the strike. The Vigo strike of **1972** was possible because there existed that concentrated working-class mass, capable of halting production and reorganizing even within the regime.

## The social base that sustained the unions
Spain’s major unions grew alongside this industrial world. Their strength came from numbers: members in large factories, powerful union sections, and the ability to call strikes that impacted the economy.

Today, these workers are retired. Most of the industries where they worked no longer exist. Employment has shifted toward services, often precarious and dispersed, where collective organization is much more difficult.

## The challenge of organizing new workers
The fragmentation of current employment complicates union action. Platform workers, temporary staff, subcontractors, or migrants in dispersed sectors do not share a fixed workplace or stable labor identity.

Part of the public debate argues that these groups do not wish to organize and that major unions have renounced representing them, limiting themselves to managing what remains of the system. This is a debatable opinion, not a proven fact.

The underlying question remains the same: what labor representation model fits an economy that no longer resembles that of **1975**.