“When jobs are at stake due to a company closure or an industrial reconversion, we observe how positions of tolerance emerge towards the exclusion of women from the right to work, as if there could be first and second class workers.” It was 1988 and the unemployment rate for women was double that of men. Women’s work still appeared to many as something superfluous, a complement to the “head of the family”, a stage surely punctuated by absences or abruptly interrupted to take care of the children and the husband. A magazine criticized the situation on its cover and explained the difference between “legal discrimination” and “real discrimination”. This is “Trabajadora”, a pioneering publication in the combination of feminist and class demands, born from the combative push of the women of the workers’ commissions and which celebrates its 40th anniversary in October.
Begoña San José was appointed secretary for women of the CCOO in the late 1970s, the first of many. San José remembers how women’s movements organized themselves into protests as soon as Franco died and how this feminist momentum was also transmitted to those who formed the Workers’ Commissions, then still hidden. At the Assembly that the organization held in 1976 in Barcelona, two colleagues – Nuria Casals and Carmen Fraile – raised their voices to demand their own structure that would bring together the problems and demands of workers. From there was born the position occupied by Begoña San José as well as the structure of the equality secretariats in the territories and sectors, since formalized in the union.
“At the beginning, its appearance was sporadic and very directed towards the interior of the union, “to talk about double discrimination, class and gender”, explains Eva Antón, who works at the Confederal Secretariat of Women and Equality of the union and who captured the magazine’s story in an investigation
This network, affirms the union leader, needed an information and communication vehicle. Thus was born the germ of the future magazine: a three or four page bulletin of the same name – “Trabajadora” -, which was launched around the first congress of the union, in 1981. At the beginning, its publication was sporadic and very targeted towards the inside of the union, “to talk about double discrimination, class and gender”, explains Eva Antón, who works at the union’s Confederal Secretariat for Women and Equality and who captured the magazine’s story in an investigation. During these early years, workers also rallied behind the demand for democratic elections in factories and demanded the participation of more women with power in structures and also as union delegates.
In October 1984, “Trabajadora” was reborn as a magazine and was here to stay. “There, it’s starting to have a regularity, even if at the beginning it’s still a four or five page brochure. They were printed in Madrid, put in envelopes and sent to the women’s secretariats of the territories and sectors who, in turn, distributed them around them; among affiliates, but also in universities, associations, libraries, civic centers,” explains Eva Antón, who estimates that in its first years between 10,000 and 25,000 copies were sent per issue. The work was carried out thanks to the voluntary contributions of many women.
Work for everyone
Begoña San José remembers the great concern about unemployment that existed during those early years. “The motto of many was that women took away the work of the father of the family, who had a salary sufficient to feed the whole family and, on the other hand, it was said that women’s wages were only rags”, he declared. States. Hence the magazine’s effort to claim women’s right to work and denounce the existence of first and second category workers. But also the demand that domestic workers not be excluded from the labor statute, approved in 1980, and the denunciation that mechanisms a priori sold as formulas to “protect” women, were in reality mechanisms to discriminate against them. This was the case for leave for marriage and family: “The woman who asked for it was lost, it was a disguised dismissal. Companies would tell you why they were going to have a woman who would always be missing.
“The motto of many was that women suppressed the work of the father of the family, who had a salary that served to feed the whole family and, on the other hand, it was said that women’s wages were only rags” , said Begoña. San José, first secretary of Women of CCOO. Hence the magazine’s effort to defend women’s right to work.
Although comrades in struggle generally accepted the demands, there were also debates and battles. “The problem was not so much that they opposed us but that they did not find room to solve our problems. There was always something more important, more urgent. Others thought that what we should do was bring women into the union, without further delay,” explains Begoña San José. One of these battles that “Trabajadora” spearheaded was that of the subsidy collected after the strike: only the “head of the family” could receive it and, of course, it could only be received by men . “For a woman to be a woman, her husband had to be disabled,” San José emphasizes. During their first attempts to modify this aid, the unionists lost the battle.
Abortion or right to divorce
But the questions addressed by “Trabajadora” went beyond strictly social and economic questions. “Commissions is and has been a socio-political union and that is why subjects such as the right to abortion, divorce, the participation of women in politics or culture have always been present in the magazine,” explains Eva Anton. The current Secretary for Women and Equality of the CCOO, Carolina Vidal, underlines the importance of the “worker” inside and outside the union, both in purely union issues and in the general demands of rights: “It has come a long way and has had a differential element: its link between trade unionism and feminism, which has meant that class and feminism have been worked on in a transversal and intertwined way. The publication, she adds, served to educate others externally, and to ensure that feminism was always present internally.
“Worker” grew up and went through different stages. There were format changes, redesigns, reorganizations of topics and sections, black and white gave way to color. In the 1990s, specialized staff took charge of the journal, which continued to draw on internal contributions as well as external collaborations. Twenty years before the Zapatero government approved the equality law, the magazine was already calling for equality plans in companies and talking about the integration of the gender perspective in all union action.
“She was very pioneering, very avant-garde when it came to asking for regulations on equality, echoing phrases that could serve as union action in this sense and also as an element of internal awareness and external and connection with the feminist world. , academic, cultural… Sometimes it was ahead of what the union itself included in its statutes,” says union member Eva Antón.
a window
Journalist Mamen Briz took over as editor of the magazine in 2001, when the publication entered its fourth period and underwent another overhaul. “I followed her, I liked her, there were few feminist publications at that time. We are thinking about the type of sections to create and are looking a lot today, being very informed about what is happening within the union, what the secretaries are doing, what the media are doing…” she says. “Trabajadora” has had different editorial boards, “people who want to be there and collaborate and people we have contacted so that there is diverse representation within the union.” Their efforts also included ensuring the presence of men’s brands.
“We tried to be a very open window on the world, we wrote on the most diverse subjects imaginable, we called on many feminisms and disciplines to think about what we could apply to d “other facets of trade unionism, by contaminating each other with knowledge”, describes Mamen. Briz on the last two decades
“We tried to be a very open window on the world, we wrote on the most diverse subjects imaginable, we called on many feminisms and disciplines to think about what we could apply to other facets of trade unionism, by contaminating each one. others with knowledge,” describes Mamen about the last two decades in which they also sought to write not only for those who were already convinced, nor for those who know what collective bargaining is. It was around this time that the magazine began to expand beyond membership and become a digital publication.
Four decades later, the magazine appears four issues a year and some of its subjects could be those of thirty years ago. “You see an issue from a long time ago and some things seem current and others, indeed, from another era. 25 years ago, we were not talking about care but about conciliation, to which we now add “co-responsibility”. The pay gap already existed and now we continue to talk about it, but we have learned that it is not only valid in collective bargaining, but that reforms are needed and none of this should be a demand reserved for women”, declared the Secretary of State. Women and Equality, Carolina Vidal. The bet is that “Trabajadora” continues to exist as a catalyst and also as a tool so that the social and economic changes to come “are feminists.”
