Workers' General Union
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| Full name | Workers' General Union |
|---|---|
| Native name | Unión General de Trabajadores |
| Founded | 1888 |
| Members | 1,057,700 members. 97,145 (34.8%) union representatives. |
| Affiliation | ITUC, ETUC |
| Key people | Pepe Álvarez, general secretary |
| Office location | Madrid, Spain |
| Country | Spain |
| Website | www.ugt.es |
The Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT, General Union of Workers) is a major Spanish trade union, historically affiliated with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).
The UGT was founded 12 August 1888 by Pablo Iglesias Posse (b.Ferrol 1850- d.Madrid 1925) in Mataró (Barcelona), with Marxist socialism as its ideological basis, despite its statutory apolitical status. Until its nineteenth Congress in 1920, it did not consider class struggle as a basic principle of trade union action. Being a member of the UGT implies an affiliation to the PSOE and vice versa.
During World War I era, the UGT followed a tactical line of close relationship and unity of action with the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT, National Labour Confederation). This era came to a sudden end with the advent of the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, who gave a legal monopoly on labor organizing to his own government-sponsored union. While the CNT opted for a radical confrontation with the regime, and were prohibited on this account, the UGT, although in disagreement with the dictatorship, adopted a collaborative attitude in order to continue to operate legally. The radicalization during the period of the Second Spanish Republic of the wing led by Francisco Largo Caballero, when the UGT surpassed a million members, and the bloody breakout of the Spanish Civil War deepened the internal fissures that resulted in the departure of Largo Caballero from the position of UGT secretary general in 1937.
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Wikipedia