Denouncing sexual harassment is not a crime

First published in French on L’Affranchi.info
Impunity… that’s what sexual harassers and abusers expect. In Spain – as in many other countries – judges often rule in their favor. The forced kiss imposed on the women’s team striker by Luis Rubiales, President of the Spanish Football Federation, is just the tip of the iceberg of a macho and authoritarian “culture” present in many circles. As one post on social networks put it: “If a world champion has to put up with this, imagine a waitress. ”

When a female worker tries to assert her rights by denouncing her hierarchical superior, the situation often backfires. In 2021, in Granada, a sommelier at FRANKFURT’S BOCANEGRA bar denounced the manager who, among other offenses, had sent her a photo of a penis in response to a question about working hours. Supported by the CNT-AIT trade union, the harassment she had suffered was denounced in court, but the judge ruled that the evidence provided was insufficient, and the case is currently under appeal.

Following this initial ruling, the manager and the company filed a complaint against the worker and the union secretary for defamation. Both face fines of 30,000 euros and two years’ imprisonment. CNT-AIT activists, supported by other trade unionists and activists from the Unitary Feminist Assembly, have already set up several “information pickets” in front of the establishment. This mobilization continues.

A new rupture in Spanish anarcho-syndicalism

[Translator note: in the following article the International Workers Association is “IWA”, but also “AIT”, which stands for Asociación Internacional de Trabajadores in Spanish. Therefore in Spain, the IWA affiliate is called CNT-AIT ]

Spanish anarcho-syndicalism has experienced a new rupture. The crisis had been brewing for a long time. It came to an end between 2015 and 2017. The CNT-AIT and CNT-CIT (or CNT©¹) are now two distinct organizations. In the international libertarian movement, this conflict is little known, or it is observed with irony and condescension: a ridiculous battle over the CNT acronyms, when there are many other more urgent battles to be fought…

It’s not that simple. CNT-CIT, which registered the CNT acronym as a trademark (hence the ©), is engaged in a legal battle of rare violence against CNT-AIT. At the time of writing, the CNT© is taking eighteen CNT-AIT unions to court, claiming damages of 50,000 euros each for the use of the CNT acronym; the premises and other resources of these unions could be seized (even if they change their name) as « property » of the CNT; several CNT-AIT members could be imprisoned as a result of these lawsuits.

The venture to capture the CNT-AIT’s heritage is the result of long-standing maneuvers, to which we’ll have occasion to return. What we need to know at the outset is that the operation has taken on an international dimension with the process that led to the creation of the International Confederation of Labor (ICL) [TN: or Confederación Internacional del Trabajo, “CIT”, in Spanish. Hence “CNT-CIT”] founded in Parma (Italy) in May 2018.

Let’s go back a bit. In December 2015, in Zaragoza, at the CNT Congress (known as the Congress of Empty Chairs, because many delegates didn’t attend), the men and women who were to head the future CNT© put forward the idea that the IWA should be overhauled. What they didn’t like about the IWA was the excessive number of small sections, particularly those from the former Eastern bloc.