What The Hell America!

Yolanda Díaz

There’s no more powerful force than the workers of the world. We have to speak to workers — and an increasingly complex world of work.

A true oligarchy is developing: that of a few multinationals acting in an absolutely undemocratic way, paying hardly any taxes, appropriating and dispossessing the world’s citizens of our data, which is crucial today. The debate today is about replacing the Washington Consensus with the Silicon Valley consensus. But it is exactly the same thing. The far right uses its far-right positions but has a shared agenda: to do away with class unions, to do away with workers’ rights. It means doing away with the tool that workers have for advancing their demands, which is the strike.

The right to strike is being discussed right now at the International Labour Organization (ILO). The 113th Session of the ILO in June is going to be key in this regard. Around the world, we see the destruction of the rights won through the accumulated struggle of all these years, in favor of near-slavery.

So I believe that it makes more sense than ever to fight for and encourage the world of work. But work is very complex today. There was the twentieth-century world of Fordist work, what we think of as industrial workers in overalls. Now there is a brutal range of different realities: unionized workers, domestic workers, young interns. Still, workers are the social majority, and what first needs doing is to demonstrate this. I humbly believe that this is what we have done in Spain.

In this country, there have been fifty-two labor reforms. The last two, one from the PSOE and one from the [conservative] Partido Popular, were practically identical. They were the same throughout Europe: they imposed the company’s decision on the workers, allowing collective agreements to fall down. We are the only country in which — after my labor law reform — old collective agreements continue to apply even when they reach their expiration date [i.e., avoiding workers losing rights because no new agreement with management has been made]. Instead, what has been imposed [elsewhere] is a neoliberal model that brutally deregulates the labor market and dismantles — or, rather, takes over — the state.

We kept our manifesto promise. Today I no longer have to make the case for this labor law reform, because there are almost 22 million people employed in Spain, more than ever before. Spanish workers today have indefinite contracts. We have to give people hope and show those unionists, those domestic workers, those young people that they are the majority.

As against Trump’s international of hate, we need an international of hope. When I launched the International Labor Congress in Madrid a few months ago, we told the world that we need a shared social agenda. We will have all manner of diversities, but there is a basic common denominator. We have defeated the neoliberal arguments, which are the same ones made around the world, including in the United States against Bernie Sanders. When we increased the minimum wage — eventually, by 61 percent — people said the world was going to come to an end. But the opposite happened. The number of people in work is growing, and with more labor rights, more social protection. This also means collecting more taxes, having more social contributions, more economic efficiency.

Neoliberalism cannot allow this to be known. It runs against the Thatcherite claim: “There is no alternative.” There is such an alternative. I believe that I have been the only labor minister since Spain’s return to democracy who has gone to the May 1 demonstration. I’ve been going since I was a child and will continue to do so. Why? Because I represent what I represent. But also because I’m the first labor minister whose ministry is not supervised by the Economy Ministry. It’s the other way around. Further, I’m proud to represent the world of work. I know well where I come from, when it was shameful to say that you were the daughter of working people. Well, I believe that when working people see me walking down the street, they see that I am like them.

The far right resists feminism and trade unionism, denies climate change, and denies democracy because it knows that the fight for women’s and workers’ rights is what makes democracy grow. Their hatred does not create jobs, does not raise salaries, does not reduce inequality, but paralyzes people. Without hope, the world does not move. And this has been the case since Spartacus. I say he is the greatest trade unionist in history.