Socio-political movement and trade union the PSUC and the debate on the fate of Comisiones Obreras (1969-1976)

Abstract

In June 1975, the «Unitary and Democratic Candidacies» obtained a powerful victory in the union elections of the Organización Sindical Española (OSE), that is, the Francoist unions. These candidacies had been promoted by Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), a socio-political and labour movement led, during the late Franco period, by workers of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC). As a result of the victory, these two parties debated whether to maintain the organisational structures of the CCOO or, on the contrary, whether the time had come to focus all their action on the positions they had won in the OSE in order to start creating a unitary union.

This debate was much more intense and complex in the PSUC than in the PCE, and it contributed to the decision to transform CCOO into a union in the autumn of 1976.