Airbus Strike: The Working Class Can Only Win by Freeing Itself Once and For All From the Union Straitjacket!

Since 25 August, Airbus employees in Spain have been on an "indefinite" strike due to deteriorating living and working conditions, after rejecting — in a referendum — an initial agreement negotiated between the unions and company management.

This strike is in sharp contrast to previous mobilisations. First, it unfolds against a backdrop of intensifying class struggle in Spain, driven primarily by low wages, job insecurity, the rising cost of living, and deteriorating working conditions. In the first seven months of 2026 alone, the number of strikes has already surpassed the total for 2025 — despite the undermining efforts of trade unions, which prefer to negotiate shameful wage-rationalisation agreements with the bourgeoisie, as seen at Zara or Primark. One must go back to 2012 to find a similar level of industrial unrest — a time marked by a severe economic crisis and the drastic austerity measures that hit the working class hard.⁽¹⁾ At that time, the Spanish bourgeoisie (socialist PSOE and conservative PP), backed into a corner, sought to revive the economy by squeezing workers’ wages to the limit: labour reforms aimed at making lay-offs easier and prioritising company-level agreements over industry-wide ones; the "flexi-precarious" nature of work (proliferation of short-term contracts); cuts to wages and pensions; a raised retirement age; and increases in indirect taxes alongside a reduction in social security. Some consequences of that crisis persist today, notably in the form of lower wages and an explosion of precarious employment.⁽²⁾ For the Spanish worker, daily life remains an ordeal, and Airbus workers are no exception.

This strike broke out over economic demands, as the Spanish newspaper Publico notes:

The dispute between Airbus and its workforce began with wage negotiations but, within weeks, expanded to encompass other aspects of working conditions. Employees are demanding a pay rise to restore the purchasing power lost in recent years (...) Remote work is another major point of contention. The company plans to reduce this arrangement from two days a week to one — a move the staff rejects, arguing that it alters previously agreed-upon terms. Employees are also calling for greater flexibility in scheduling time off, the reinstatement of bonuses withheld during sick leave, and a review of absenteeism monitoring mechanisms (...) Added to these demands are calls for improvements regarding canteens, public transport, routes, and schedules, as well as issues concerning workload at the Cádiz site and the updating of job classifications. Unions are also seeking guarantees regarding 'Project Bromo' — an initiative to integrate specific space-related activities from Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales — to ensure that any reorganisation safeguards the wages, seniority, working conditions, and representation rights of the affected employees.⁽³⁾

What makes this conflict unique is that the wildcat strike quickly spiraled beyond the control of the main union leaderships. On 23 July, in an effort to tighten management control over the workforce and put an end to the strikes that had begun on 1 July, Airbus management and the major collaborationist unions (CCOO, SIPA, and ATP)⁽⁴⁾ negotiated an agreement which amounted to capitulation; this was rejected by a large majority of workers, as it failed to address any of their initial demands. To press their case with the company, workers began holding regular general assemblies in late August — independently of the traditional unions, most of which opposed continuing the strike and called for an immediate return to work. A strike committee was subsequently elected, comprising union members from the UGT (socialist) and CGT (revolutionary syndicalist) as well as non-unionized workers — who spearheaded the protest via Telegram channels.⁽⁵⁾

The strike movement rapidly spread to several of the company’s sites, and some unions threatened to extend it to locations in France. Faced with this loss of control by the bourgeoisie and its main unions — as workers in general assemblies⁽⁶⁾ successively rejected all their proposals — the socialist government sought to break the strike by acting as a "mediator." In capitalist parlance, which aims to obscure class antagonism, "mediator"⁽⁷⁾ implies positioning oneself above the interests of both groups to reach an agreement serving the "general" interest. In reality, this means nothing other than serving the interests of the bourgeoisie by deceiving the proletariat. This is precisely what Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing government did: company management proposed a new agreement — presented as better aligned with workers' demands than previous ones — yet it still failed to address the strikers' core demands. Consequently, the agreement was once again rejected by a majority of the workers.⁽⁸⁾

Faced with these successive setbacks, the capitalists employed a different tactic: following the period of negotiation, they sought to wear down the movement. They stopped negotiating, refused to make any concessions to the strikers, and signed the agreement despite strong opposition — solely to fracture the movement by leveraging the support of "dissenting" unions. And, naturally, it worked: the UGT, initially part of the strike, quickly called for a return to work⁽⁹⁾; the CGT followed suit, deeming it necessary to "suspend" the strike on the grounds that no further gains could be wrung from the company.⁽¹⁰⁾ Although the workforce had voted by a narrow margin to continue the strike, operations have now resumed at most sites (Tablada in Seville, Illescas in Toledo, El Puerto de Santa María in Cádiz, and Albacete). Yet the "far-left of capital" — Trotskyists at the forefront — had promised us that things would change with grassroots unionism, which was supposedly "protest-oriented" and "democratic." As always, history delivers the final verdict, and it has done so here.

Regardless of the political stripe of any given union leadership — whether they present themselves as apolitical advocates of negotiation and social dialogue, or as staunch revolutionaries — trade unionism has become a reactionary instrument tasked with negotiating the price of labour power, to the detriment of any genuine class action. When unions call for a return to work, they are not betraying their function; on the contrary, they are fully carrying it out: acting as watchdogs for the bourgeoisie and managing the workforce in the service of capitalist interests.

As early as December 1918, during the revolutionary wave in Germany, Rosa Luxemburg denounced the clearly counter-revolutionary role of the social-democratic trade unions:

(...) the official unions have shown themselves to be a bourgeois state organisation, and an organisation of the capitalist ruling class. This is why it’s obvious that the struggle (...) has to prioritise considerations about the liquidation of these obstacles⁽¹¹⁾

The Italian Left, in the tradition of the Internationalist Communist Party (PCInt) founded in 1943, further developed this position: it is not this or that specific union organisation that is counter-revolutionary, but trade unionism itself, due to its progressive integration into the state apparatus in the era of monopoly and imperialist capitalism. Thus, we declared in our 1952 Platform:

The party categorically affirms that in the current phase of the totalitarian domination of imperialism, the unions are an indispensable tool of this domination, to the extent that they even pursue goals that correspond to the bourgeoisie’s aims for its own preservation and war. Therefore, the party rejects the false perspective that these organisations could, in the future, fulfil a proletarian function so that the party would have to do an about turn and adopt a position of winning positions within their leadership.⁽¹²⁾

It is no longer possible to win back the unions; the revolution will not be achieved with these organisations, but against them: such is the lesson of history that every revolutionary must bear in mind during the struggle.

This strike marks a resurgence — albeit still tentative and confined to a single sector — of the proletarian struggle in Spain; a struggle that will sooner or later rise again like a phoenix, driven by the crisis of capital, the march toward war, and the deteriorating living and working conditions of the proletariat. While this may currently seem like a distant hope, we are working — within the limits of our capabilities — to make it a reality.

Above all, however, this conflict illustrates the extent to which the Left and the trade unions pose a danger to the working class. Sabotaging the struggle is just one of the many misdeeds committed by these lackeys of the bourgeoisie. Since taking office, the Spanish government — backed by a segment of the far-left and hailed as a model by the entire European Left (including its supposedly radical factions) — has pursued a fiercely anti-proletarian policy that rivals those of its predecessors. Judge for yourselves:

In the first quarter of 2025, real wages remained 4.2% below their level in the first quarter of 2021. In 2022, the real median wage was roughly the same as in 2008, having fallen by approximately 0.5% over the period.⁽¹³⁾
The 2012 labour reform, adopted under the conservative government, has largely been retained, as has the 2011 pension reform raising the retirement age to 67.⁽¹⁴⁾
Precarious jobs remain widespread in the labour market.⁽¹⁵⁾
Hundreds of thousands of workers perform unpaid overtime.⁽¹⁶⁾
During the 2021 metalworkers' strike in Cádiz, the government deployed riot police to suppress the protests, arresting several strikers.⁽¹⁷⁾
A quarter of the Spanish population remains at risk of poverty or social exclusion.⁽¹⁸⁾

This is the result of the policy pursued by the two main trade union confederations, CCOO and UGT, which have consistently sought to negotiate with the government and to replace class action with "social dialogue," "concertation", and other such nonsense. These organisations are marked by a long history of class collaboration, having supported all the worst anti-worker policies since the return to democracy in 1975.⁽¹⁹⁾ The government and the unions are standing guard, ready to do whatever it takes to prevent any resurgence of class struggle.

This policy of consultation was shaken by the wildcat strike at Airbus, though only partially. Indeed, this struggle faces significant limitations: a segment of the working class still places its faith in union organisations when they claim to represent the rank-and-file and profess opposition to capitalism; the struggle spread along corporatist lines — extending to other company sites — rather than generalising across different economic sectors or to subcontracting firms. A struggle isolated from other sectors of the working class, focused on purely sectional demands, is doomed to defeat; the strength of the proletariat lies, conversely, in asserting its unity and class independence. The failure of the Airbus strike — with the return to work imposed by the rank-and-file unions — demonstrates the futility of the sectoral strike strategy.

Just as during the "wild years" of the 1960s and 70s, workers must return to methods of class-based struggle: the formation of independent and autonomous strike committees and general assemblies; and open struggle against the unions and bourgeois parties — both left and right — that will seek to channel and contain the movement and prevent its geographical extension of the strike to other enterprises and the generalisation of the struggle to all sectors. Only through these means will the proletariat, finally be able to free itself from the chains of oppression and capitalist exploitation. To ensure that these episodes of struggle are not merely fleeting, and that a new revolutionary phase begins, it is essential that all those who understand the trajectory of capitalism, and its insoluble crisis, come together to demonstrate that this system has no future and that the working class must organise itself into its class party – the international party of the future.

Xav
Groupe Révolutionnaire Internationaliste
15 September 2026