IWW-CYROC organised a short symbolic protest outside the Spanish Embassy in Nicosia, today Saturday 28th September, as the bare minimum of contributions on the day for international mobilisation in solidarity to the La Suiza 6.
A few words about the case: In June 24 2024, the Spanish States Supreme Court has confirmed the sentence of three and a half years in prison and a fine of €125,428 for six union members (5 of them women) of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Their “crime”? Peacefully picketing outside ‘La Suiza’, a bakery in Xixón, in 2017.
Why was the bakery being picketed? Because a former employee (one of the six now incarcerated workers, despite her not participating in the campaign due to her health…), approached the union and complained about the severe abuse she was suffering under the yoke of management. Being underpaid and forced to overwork, with barely any weekly time off and no overtime pay, was only the tip of the iceberg. According to the worker, she was often the victim of sexual abuse by her boss and owner of the bakery (lewd comments, questions about her underwear, indecent propositions, etc). Perhaps most appalling, after she informed him that she was pregnant, he forced her to lift flour sacks, which led to an abortion scare, that in turn led to the worker taking a sick leave.
After many failed attempts to meet with the owner and corroborate (or deny) the accusations, the union organised some demonstrations outside the bakery. The owner’s response was a myriad lawsuits blaming the union for harassment and coercion that forced him to close up his business, despite the fact that the bakery was already up for sale a year before any of this. The union’s campaign faced an onslaught of repression (all info about the case since 2017 can be found here), which culminated in this recent baffling decision of the Supreme Court; peaceful picketing and labour action in general, whose quintessential purpose is to disrupt business, are not supposed to disrupt business…
Paraphrasing the General Secretary of CNT, syndicalism and militant organised labour is indeed a thorn on the side of the system, and as such it is targeted. This should be obvious in Cyprus; just last year, 8 strikers (7 of them women) were illegally fired for and while striking against the illegal termination of their union representative. Such blunt disregard of organising rights was unprecedented in Cyprus. The Department of Labour Relations sued the insurance company responsible for these anti-union actions, but the Law Office of the Republic has yet to forward the case, a year and a half later; the same Law Office that recently had no problem to fast track the issuing of an opinion against a trade unionist of the police force, which can very possibly result in his termination, making this the second such incident in two years and the first that involves a public employee. The same Law Office whose recent conflict with the Auditor General led to the termination of the latter…
It is painfully clear that in these trying times, it is more urgent and necessary than ever to stand up, stand together and stand firm in our conviction that syndicalism is not a crime, neither in Spain, in Cyprus or anywhere else! For workers to have any kind of decent life, and a hope for a brighter tomorrow, it must be heard loud and clear all across the world, that an Injury to One is an Injury to All!
