SPAIN: Victory for Franco

Even with the 40% increase in pay ordered by the government last year, the workers of Generalissimo Francisco Fran co’s Spain remained the most meanly paid in Western Europe (average: $1.60 a day). When price rises quickly wiped out those meager gains, Franco’s regime prepared for new labor trouble this fall, at the end of vacation season. Snapped Lieut. General Alonso Vega, boss of all Spanish police: “The sooner the better.” Last week the trouble came, and Dictator Franco and his police were ready for it. In the ever-restless industrial center of Bilbao, scene of labor disturbances 16 months ago, 2,800 Basque workers at Spain’s major shipyard began a sitdown strike for more pay. On orders from Madrid, the shipyard raised the price of meals in the company lunchroom to make their stayin more costly. Then Franco’s civil guards marched into the shipyard and put out the strikers. Because they had broken their work contract (in Spain, as in Russia, any strike is illegal), the sit-downers were summarily fired. In addition, the government-run labor syndicate cut off their unemployment benefits and wiped out their seniority rights.

For three tense days, management all along Bilbao’s dirty Nervion River industrial complex waited to see whether, as a result of these harsh moves, the unrest would spread. But the workers were unorganized and without strike funds. On the fourth day the shipyard posted a notice: “As of today, job applications will be considered.” Berets in hand, the Basques meekly filed over the long concrete overpass that carried them from their grimy slum homes across the railroad tracks and into the shipyard again. Without yielding an inch, Franco had won, at least for now—even though the inflation, the poverty and the discontent were still there.