From Freedom News (18/07/2024).
The Suiza 6 face three and a half years each for protesting outside their workplace
Union branches across Spain have denounced the Supreme Court’s confirmation of prison sentences against six bakery workers for picketing. The workers were sentenced to three and a half years in prison and a fine of over 100,000 Euro. The workers at La Suiza bakery in Gijón took action to protest unpaid overtime and poor working conditions.
The judgement “equated informational pickets and concentrations of workers at the doors of a private business with coercion and threats”, said the CNT-AIT union in Grenada, warning that the case could set a dangerous precedent. According to the union, the sentencing shows the latent authoritarianism of Spain’s penal code, whose interpretation allows such prison sentences to be handed out at judges’ discretion. The CNT-AIT have called on Spain’s ruling centre-left coalition to repeal this repressive law, to no avail.
“We are talking about a union action of fourteen demonstrations without arrests, violence, or police charges”, said the workers’ lawyer Victoria Galán. “That is what is surprising, that the rallies are considered coercion and that the ruling makes business freedom prevail over union freedom, with the argument that it is annoying that if someone enters the bakery they are booed”. In the UK, recent minimum service laws similarly threaten workers’ ability to strike, with no indications of their repeal by the new Labour government.
Gabriel Fonten
Who are the 6 of La Suiza?
They are 6 people – five of them women – sentenced to three and a half years in prison and to pay compensation of €150,000 (€90,000 for moral damages to a businessman and his relatives: wife and two adult children) for their involvement, to varying degrees, in the trade union conflict that CNT Xixón (Asturies) had with La Suiza Bakery. One of them is the worker herself, who did not participate in the public denunciation campaign due to her health, and is now facing a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence simply for joining a union.
This conflict was part of a series of struggles in the hospitality and small business sectors that had been taking place in Xixón for several years. The conflict developed, on the part of the union, within normality through gatherings, closely monitored by the National and Local Police, in front of the bakery to denounce the case. The history of struggles, the attitude of the company, and the solidarity of the neighborhood resulted in growing support that was harshly contested.
From the beginning, the businessman and his family initiated a campaign of lawfare that included a barrage of lawsuits based on the most bizarre grounds, lawsuits that were repeatedly dismissed until one of them eventually succeeded under the right conditions. On June 24, 2021, they were convicted by a judge, Lino Rubio Mayo, known in the city for the controversies his rulings have caused in recent years.
Six years after the events, following the filing of an appeal with the Supreme Court, the 6 of La Suiza are still awaiting its resolution, their lives conditioned by the Damocles’ sword that their imprisonment represents.
(Source: 6 de la Suiza)
See also:
“Court Update: La Suiza Six Decision Condemned” (IWW Ireland)
“La sentencia de La Suiza es un aviso claro y directo a todas las organizaciones sindicales”, Interview with Erika Conrado Arredondo, secretary general of the CNT (Naiz, 10/07/2024)