Not the first time
When tenants and workers joined forces
History teaches us that rights are not handed out: they are won by organising and building collective power. These are some of the strikes that proved that, when we stop together, we can change things.
20,000 households went on rent strike against landlords’ abuses. Women tenants organised the resistance in working-class neighbourhoods and carried the struggle into the factories. When one of their leaders was taken to court, 15,000 shipyard workers walked off the job and surrounded the courthouse. The combined strength of the strikers and the labour movement forced the authorities to act and helped win the first rent control laws.
Nearly 100,000 people stopped paying rent in one of the biggest tenant strikes in our history. Organised by the CNT Construction Union, the mobilisation spilled beyond the buildings and spread through the working-class neighbourhoods. Faced with repression against the tenants, the unions responded with a two-day general strike. The struggle for housing proved its power to mobilise the whole working class.
Ten million workers brought Italy to a standstill in a general strike for the right to housing and against the rising cost of living. The pressure won a freeze on the lowest rents and a plan to build 214,000 homes. But the struggle did not end there. The strike opened a cycle of tenant mobilisations, occupations of empty homes and the creation of new unions. Over the following years, the movement won further victories, including a rent regulation law in 1978.
Strikes that changed things
| 1855 | The first general strike | After the execution of labour leader Josep Barceló and the ban on workers’ associations, Barcelona saw the first general strike in Spain in July 1855. Under the slogan “Association or death”, thousands of workers stopped the factories to demand the right to organise. |
| 1917 | Revolutionary general strike | In the face of soaring prices and political crisis, UGT and CNT joined forces to call a revolutionary general strike. Despite brutal repression, the mobilisation shook the foundations of the Restoration regime. |
| 1919 | La Canadiense | A strike sparked by eight dismissals ended up paralysing much of Catalan industry for 44 days. Workers’ solidarity forced the employers and the Government to give in. Among its victories was one we take for granted today: the eight-hour working day. |
| 1951 | The Barcelona tram strike | It all began with a popular boycott against a rise in tram fares. The trams ran empty and the protest spread until it became a general strike against the rising cost of living. In the middle of the Franco dictatorship, the mobilisation forced the fare rise to be reversed. |
| 1976 | General strike for freedom and against the rising cost of living | In the middle of the Transition, and still under the structures of the Franco dictatorship, CCOO, UGT and USO called a general strike on 12 November against the wage freeze, unemployment and the economic measures of Adolfo Suárez’s government. They also demanded a labour amnesty and freedom to organise unions. Despite repression and the fact that unions were still illegal, the mobilisation brought together more than two million people and was decisive in turning the page on the dictatorship from below. |
| 1988 | The 14-D general strike | Millions of workers brought the country to a standstill against Felipe González’s Government’s Youth Employment Plan. Even public television stopped broadcasting. The strength of the strike forced the Government to withdraw the plan and paved the way for new social gains. |
| 2002 | Strike against the «decretazo» (decree) | Aznar’s Government tried to cut the rights of unemployed people. The response was a general strike that paralysed entire sectors of the economy. Union pressure forced the Government to reverse much of the reform. |
| 2010 and 2012 | Against the labour reforms | Millions of people went on strike again against cuts, cheaper dismissals and austerity policies. Although they did not manage to stop the reforms, the mobilisations kept workers’ resistance alive against those who wanted to make us pay for the crisis. |
| 2017 | Country-wide stoppage of 3 October | After the police violence of 1 October, unions and civil society groups called a general strike and a country-wide stoppage. Hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets all over Catalonia and showed that when we stop together, we stop everything. |
| 2018 and 2019 | 8M feminist strikes | Millions of women took to the streets and called for a stoppage of work, studies, consumption and care. The feminist strikes went far beyond the workplace and proved something fundamental: when women stop, the world stops. Their strength put feminist demands at the centre of public debate. |
Now it’s our turn
When tenants get organised, landlords tremble. When that power joins forces with the labour unions, we can shut down the whole country.
The rights we have today were won through struggle. The eight-hour day, wage rises and rent regulation were the result of strikes, mobilisations and years of collective organising. Behind every victory were people who stood up to their bosses, their landlords and governments that seemed untouchable. People like us, who got organised and discovered that together they had the power to change things.
The history of these strikes also reminds us of something fundamental: the struggle for housing and the struggle for labour rights have always gone hand in hand. Those of us who work to earn a wage have to hand over a large part of it to our landlords and the banks. While rents and the cost of living keep rising, our wages lose value. And the harder it is to make it to the end of the month, the harder it becomes to turn down a precarious job, stand up to our bosses or sustain a strike. The exploitation we suffer at work carries on when we get home.
That’s why, more than a hundred years ago, the tenants of Glasgow and Barcelona understood that they needed to join forces with the labour movement. And that’s why, in Italy in 1969, ten million workers brought the country to a standstill to demand the right to housing.
Today we have a historic opportunity ahead of us. We have filled the streets, we have won victories that seemed impossible and we have shown that collective struggle can wrest rights from the powerful. Now we want to go further. We want to bring rents down, end evictions, win open-ended contracts and recover the purchasing power of our wages. We want the money we earn from our work to let us live with dignity, not to fatten the profits of a few.
On 11 November we are going on a general strike for housing and the cost of living. In every neighbourhood, every town, every workplace and every place of study, our task is to get organised so that the strike is massive. Because the power we need to win is in our hands, in our ability to organise and act together.
A hundred years ago, tenants and workers showed they could change history. On 11 November it’s our turn. Everyone out on general strike!
