Hence why I am saying : as well as putting forward the structural reforms required from parochial boy's analysis, the Left should also look into making it easier for young people to get jobs. Right now the unions in Spain are labour aristocracy. The same phenomenon that - in other countries - held back womens rights in the workplace to reduce the supply of labour so they could bargain for more. No wonder they have a terrible image.
A big part of the problem is back in the winds of history - the latin countries developed communist inspired trade unions who saw there role to be the wholesale overturning of capitalism and obstinate, unambiguous opposition to the bosses. In the more succesful countries, there has always been a more collaborative relationship.
I'm not sure the answer is "weaken" the trade unions, at the risk of winding up with the opposite side of the story, which is the horror of the UK/US style liberal labour market, but instead to somehow change the remit in which they operate; so that you wind up with something closer to the German or Swiss model of trade unionism.
As for the liberalisation argument. Well isn't it just the case that you wind up displacing the problem from the young to the old? And in any case, France has gone through a series of liberalisation, and the issue at hand has not budged. So I am minded to think the structural issues - be it deindustrialisation, industrial and fiscal policy, the pain and failure of an economic transition - all count for more at the end of the day.
