6. THE COLLECTIVIZATION OF THE BARBERSHOPS UNDER THE EGIS OF THE NATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOR

The barbershops before July 19

On every street, on every corner, one right next to another, are the barbershops, and there are no regulations to restrict this abuse. The situation was made worse by the insolvency of many bold entrepreneurs who opened their shops under the onus of installment payments and thought they could live at the expense of the working class barber, who needs a job and who, hounded by necessity, worked under terrible conditions.

The barbershops that offered shaves at 0.30 pesetas without a tip were the answer to the wishes of the parasites accustomed to living off their fellow men. We shall speak of these persons in a separate section.

A shave for 0.15 pesetas and a haircut for 0.25 pesetas

A cheap mirror, a few towels and a bar of soap for every one hundred customers was the entire inventory of these establishments that called themselves “barbershops”. The work of the barber was carried out without any other remuneration besides a commission of fifty percent for his services. As a result, the impoverished customer (no one else would patronize these establishments) who came in for a shave, left with eczema, etc., and the barber himself, after having worked without pause and without counting the hours, was left with a daily income of three pesetas, which is not even enough to buy bread.

We have seen this variety of barbershop emerge, however, right in the middle of the Fifth District, we have seen them on busy downtown streets of the city, Nueva de la Rambla, in the Ramblas itself, Cortes, Aribau, Muntaner, etc. Not featuring shaves for 0.15 pesetas, but for 0.30 pesetas, without a tip. These barbershops have the same payment methods and working conditions as the others: the payment of commissions by percentage and similar sanitary conditions for the customer. This method of payment of his workers was very advantageous for the owner, and, quite recently, we have seen barbershops organized and operating on the same basis charging 0.40 and 0.50 pesetas.

The “better” barbershops

With regard to these barbershops we shall only discuss wages and hours, since the service was perfect.

Forty pesetas and twenty-five centímos for nine hours of work every day, was the weekly wage of the comrade barber who was fortunate enough to have a job. Over three hundred barbers were unemployed and large numbers of others made no more than twelve pesetas a week, all earned on one Saturday of work.

The strike last May, in which the eight-hour day was won along with a weekly wage of sixty pesetas, plus ten percent of the receipts, allowed the barber to earn a weekly wage of sixty-eight to seventy pesetas.

However, since the cost of these new working conditions and wages was paid for by a rise in the price of the barbershops’ services, this gave the employers the excuse, due to the decrease in the number of customers, to cut back on the work week and even reduce it to three days a week.

As a result, the strike that was won in May caused the worker to have only three days of work with a wage of thirty-six pesetas. And then, amid such poverty and the crisis of our profession, came July 19.

The collectivization of the barbershops

When, last August, the Generalitat decreed the forty-hour week and a fifteen percent increase in wages, the employers were dealt a mortal blow.

A mortal blow, because the decree put an end to so much exploitation and to the pigsties of the barbershops that charged 0.15 and 0.30 pesetas.

The workers resolutely grappled with the problem of the barbershops in order to study the whole affair from a practical point of view and to solve the problem on the basis of an understanding of its cause. After fifteen days of study and discussion, a general assembly resolved to proceed to confiscate the barbershops and organize them by zones. This project was carried out with such determination that, after four weeks, we controlled all the barbershops of the city and its neighborhoods.

Our organization

There were too many barbershops; the economic situation of our industry required the immediate closing of many of them. Nine hundred were closed, with a monthly savings of eight hundred thousand pesetas in rent payments.

Today we have no more than two hundred forty barbershops in all. Nor are they all of the most modern kind, but rather those that are most advantageously located. The building itself presents no problem, since the appurtenances of the barbershops that were closed were used to replace those of the antiquated or dilapidated establishments.

At the present time all the barbers have jobs; none are unemployed. Better yet, we have provided jobs for some three hundred fifty comrades who are refugees; these comrades have taken the places of those who have gone to fight at the front.

In the two hundred forty barbershops that still exist, work is carried out from eight in the morning to nine at night without interruption. Each barber works for six and a half hours, with two shifts over the thirteen-hour day, the day shift and the evening shift.

We have provided jobs for all barbers and a more complete service for the public. Each barbershop has two delegates, one for the day shift and one for the evening shift, who represent the collective and seek to improve service. They deliver daily reports to our central offices, and on Saturday they collect the weekly wages of the comrades of their barbershops, who are paid that evening.

Our wages

This new structure allowed us to pay all the barbers without exception sixty pesetas a week during the first few weeks of collectivization; now we pay them seventy-five pesetas a week. We said all of them without exception because there are presently no unemployed workers in our trade union. When we refer to barbershop workers, we include under this common rubric the former owners and widows of owners of barbershops. The former owner is considered as just another comrade and as such he works and enjoys the same pay as the others. The widows of the former owners are also paid seventy-five pesetas for the services they render within our organization.

Our goals

We seek to improve our barbershops and establish laboratories to discover chemical products that will benefit the public. We also seek to improve the situation of our comrades, because up until recently we have not been able to live. Today we have a total of three thousand one hundred members; this figure includes the former owners and widows of former owners who, as we have said, are considered to be comrades.

Collectivization has put into our hands establishments with a total value of some four million five hundred thousand pesetas, which we know we must manage for the good of the collective and for the benefit of a more just and equal society. If the former owners were to seek to re-open their old barbershops, this would prove to be totally impossible; many of them have nothing left but the walls and others only the name and the fact that their doors are still open to the public, since they are under new management.

This is the information that was provided to us at the offices of the Barbers Trade Union, located at Number 44 Carmen Street, the building that was once the headquarters of the ill-fated Lliga Catalana.

These offices have organized the barbers with great skill and competence; in them, most promising activities are underway in this new revolutionary era, under the egis of the CNT.

EXCERPT FROM THE SPEECH DELIVERED BY COMRADE JUAN PAPIOL, OF THE BARBERS TRADE UNION, BROADCAST LIVE OVER RADIO E.C.N. 1—CNT-FAI

“Our industry had 1,100 establishments; and precisely because of this vast number, all of us were mired in the darkest miseries. One thousand one hundred establishments that represented 1,100 rent payments and so many other expenses such as lighting, which exacted an excessively heavy contribution from this industry. At the same time, we were the victims of all the suppliers of the materials indispensable for our industry, for which we always paid more than a three hundred percent markup. Naturally, this excessive number of establishments led to fierce competition, which had a repercussion not only to the detriment of the bourgeoisie, but also to that of the working class of this industry which was in no position to make economic demands; for the industry, due to its overdevelopment, did not yield enough economic profit.”

“After earning our meager weekly wage, we were obliged to spend about 100 pesetas on the tools of our trade, and then continue to spend about 1.50 pesetas a month on them, since the suppliers and the brokers, or some other middleman, have us at their mercy. Ours was a completely devalued industry, in which the bourgeoisie itself was completely incapacitated with regard to everything that had to do with the economic order. With regard to things relating to the moral order, its insolvency was unmatched. Therefore, given the form in which our economic and moral order had developed, the only solution was to collectivize all the tools and elements of labor for the equal benefit of those who worked in this industry; it must be pointed out, as well, that there are about a hundred owners, real exploiters, modern slave-drivers, who by means of their unbridled greed extract a profit of three hundred fifty to four hundred pesetas a week.”

“In agreement with the comrades of the National Confederation of Labor, we make the following proposal: reduce the number of barbershops from 1,100 to 200, which would save 100,000 pesetas a month in rent, plus 30,000 pesetas for lighting and a considerable reduction in the amount paid for property taxes. Collectivizing our industry would thus save approximately 150,000 pesetas each month due to the reduction of these costs. These 150,000 pesetas can be used to improve the conditions of the barbershop workers, and can not only resolve their desperate economic situation, but at the same time will provide us with a solution for one of the most important and difficult problems of our time: that of unemployment, which we have definitively and consistently resolved. There are no unemployed workers in our trade union; in the category of the barbershop workers there is not even one single worker idled due to a lack of work.”

“The 235 barbershops that remain employ all the barbers who are working as well as those who, due to a lack of work, are struggling in the grips of the tentacles of deadly poverty. Like every great project, ours, due to its ambitious scope, will inevitably come up against obstacles that naturally arise in such cases.”

“First of all, the organization of a supply system for the delivery of barbers equipment and materials, which is something that cannot be accomplished in twenty-four hours, but which can be improvised in order to buy time to design the perfect administrative system that must regulate our social, economic and moral life. We shall also have to face those who are unwilling, those who due to a lack of consciousness and social education and a lack of economic knowledge, as well as a deficiency of idealist spirit, were reluctant to identify themselves with us in this new system of labor that we have just established. In accordance with our basic principles, with the final goal of the National Confederation of Labor that consists in the suppression of the owning class, we have expropriated, in the most authentic way, the employers of our industry.”

“We have paid absolutely no indemnities; we have only recognized the right of all the owners to work. Buy incorporating them into the new system of labor, all that remains is the man, whose right to life we acknowledge.”

“The product of labor is divided with absolute equality. There are no categories among us; we all earn the same wages. In the moral order, as well, we all have the same rights and the same duties. This project was carried through by the majority of the workers. Despite some difficulties, the collective labor is being consolidated, and is highlighted by the most brilliant successes and the most hard-fought victories.”

“In the common labor of production, we have increased the weekly wage by 40 percent. In the moral order, the relations between all the workers have reached such an elevated level that one is capable of conceiving the hope that in such a short period of time the reality of our anarchist ideal has penetrated the hearts of all the workers.”