OBJECT OF STUDY
The object of study of this work is the analysis of the tratment that four Catalan magazines (Arreu, Canigó, Oriflama and Presència) made of the process of the transformation of the framework of labor relations and the labor conflictivity. Chronologically this process is understood between November 20, 1975 – date of the death of General Francisco Franco that can be understood as the formal starting point of the spanish transition – and April 1977, a month that began with the enactment of the “Ley de Asociaciones Sindicales” on April 1, which ended with the police search of the majority of trade union offices – the CNT was left out- on Thursday, the 28th of the same month.
This study does no pretend to be a history of the process of changing the issues related to the working class. What is intended to do is an analysis of the process of transformation of the framework of labor relations and worker conflict in the transition process through the catalan periodical press of the moment. It is not exactly a matter of observing how the dynamics of the workers movement developed, but rather how they were said to develop from the different media. What is analyzed, therefore, are the centers of attention and the treatment that these make of each of the journals and contrast between them. An information that, at the same time, participates in the changes that were produced by modifying consciences and, through these, acts.
SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY
Four catalan journals of general information – Arreu, Canigó, Oriflama and Presència – were chosen for the preparation of this work, which were not “party related media” but “mass media”. These four journals have been chosen because in the first place they needed to be publications that fled from the immediacy of the newspaper offering information with a certain dose of reflection, and secondly, that these were written in catalan. If the aim of this study had been exclusively to gather information to monitor the transformations of the catalan workers’ scenario during the transition, a magazine with Destino que no Oriflama would have been more useful. In any case, it was interesting to see what information related to the universe of the working class a reader of magazines in catalan had during the transition process. It was also relevant that they were “mass” newspapers because they wanted to look beyond the “party” press, to the “hidden” service of what interests were the different “independent” magazines that could be purchased in a newsstand, see the different approaches offered by catalan magazines.
Once the selection was made, a systematic emptying of all the information that had something to do with this process was done. Each of them has been made a file with the name of the journal that publishes it, the date of publication, the title, the author, the pages it occupies, the graphic material that accompanies it and the author of it, and the central theme of the news. And once the press has been emptied of the four journals, a new categorization of the articles has been elaborated in order to incorporate each one of them within the four main thematic areas of which the work consists: Trade Unionism, Economic Conflict, Political Conflict and Peasant . All this material, at the same time, has been contrasted with work done by some of the leading specialists in the field.
CONCLUSIONS
The set of journals studied have a remarkable interest in the issues related to the transformation of the framework of labor relations and worker conflict. This interest is not capricious but is justified by the high prominence that the labor movement was acquiring since the late sixties, which increased to reach the seventies and had its time of maximum splendor in 1976. The news press Catalan periodical will not overlook the role of motor of the anti-Franco struggle that the labor movement developed and will collect its initiatives with great profusion.
The process of transformation of the Francoist trade union structure takes place in a very short period of time in which the vertical trade unionism is liquidated and the democratic one irrupted, replacing it. But not only this phenomenon of confrontation and substitution between vertical and democratic trade unionism is observed, but within the democratic movement it also experiences movements. On the one hand, the unitary will expressed above all by the CCOO but also by the USO will be left behind. Once the common enemy has disappeared, the unitary projects begin to disappear in favor of the reinforcement of the own organizations. On the other hand, after years in which the democratic unionism lacked instruments of representation and negotiation and, therefore, doomed to the attack against the State, the increasing recognition of the trade union centrals will make them abandon the union model based on the Confrontation and another is adopted that will revolve around the negotiation.
All these events, together with the important struggle in the factories and in the field without which the process of transforming the labor relations framework would have been different, will be addressed to the journals under study, each from their point of view and with We encourage you to project your interpretation of reality into the future. During the transition process it was not easy to establish what support a certain political practice would obtain and everyone tried to take the best position for when the race began. In the union field is not different and we can see how each of the magazines is decanting towards one of the existing union models represented in the different trade union centers with the will that this could have a prominent role in finishing the transition process.
Despite of these divergences that will be accentuated as the transition process progresses, the four journals are positioned next to the working class, often arrogantly voicing their voice. The approach that all will defend to resolve the lack of democracy in labor relations will be the same as that of the whole anti-Francoist trade union centers: the demand for a break with the vertical Francoist trade union apparatus, an event that after many stretches and loosens It will end up producing, achieving in the union field a rupture with the Francoist past that can not be carried out in all areas.
