The General Confederation of Labor (Spanish: Confederación General del Trabajo,
CGT) is a Spanish trade union federation. The
CGT was a result of a split in the anarchist National Confederation of Labor (
CNT). In 1979, at the first
CNT congress after Spain's transition to
democracy, there was a fundamental disagreement concerning union
elections. Such
elections allow Spanish workers to elect union delegates to factory committees every four years. Some deemed this a renewal of
anarcho-syndicalism, but the more orthodox in the
organization considered such
elections a "
government intervention in labor-capital relations". Moreover, this would involve receiving state funding. The two factions
… Read more split and there were two CNTs. They fought over ownership of the name
CNT. In 1989, the orthodox
CNT prevailed in court and the renovators took the name
CGT. The
CGT has participated in union
elections since 1989, receiving the fourth most
votes behind CCOO, the UGT, and the CSIF. It has 100,000 members, as of 2018.
The colors black and red have been used by anarchists since at least the late 1800s, though generally used by anarcho-
communists. The
flag was used as the symbol of the anarcho-
syndicalists by the
CNT during the Spanish Civil
War. The black represents
anarchism and the red represents leftist and socialist ideals. George Woodcock writes that the bisected black-and-red
flag symbolized a uniting of "the spirit of later
anarchism with the mass appeal of the First International"