Freedom of association and returning to the labor unions the heritage of the "vertical union".

It emerged as a spontaneous, semi-clandestine, workplace-based movement in the early 1960s, often working through the existing Francoist vertical union and works council system.

I/J Industrial Union also call a vertical union.

UCU is a vertical union representing casualised researchers and teaching staff as well as "permanent" lecturers.

Since the late 1950s, the trade-union policy of the PCE has marked the over-involvement of the Vertical unions.

Many of its members participated in vertical union elections of 1963 in order to infiltrate the official regime union, including Marcelino Camacho.

By mid-1950 SOBSI had twenty-five vertical unions as well as many local affiliated unions.

The tactic of CCOO was entryism, i.e.: infiltration in the Vertical Unions of Francoism.

After the death of conservative Enrique Pla y Deniel Añoveros became more vocal; he co-engineered condemnation of the official vertical unions, declared by the Bishops Conference in July 1968.

In the early 1960s he was involved in the "cincopuntiste" agreements between the former CNT leaders and the Francoist vertical unions, which he expected to allow the CNT to survive after Franco.

They are, nevertheless, complex organisations comprising national, vertical unions which organise all workers of the same branch of the economy (with provincial, regional and local sections), together with horizontal structures aggregating all workers and/or vertical structures within each geographic area.

With the re-emergence of the UGT from its period of relative inactivity during Francoism (it had refused to participate in the vertical union system), the ideological divisions between the two unions became an important feature of the post-1975 Spanish labour movement.

But communist and other militants were active, especially in the railway workshops, and during the 1960s they managed to organize industrial action, put up their own candidates for elections within the vertical union framework, and published a sporadic newssheet (Martino de Jugo 1980; Bulnes 1967).

Indeed, one of the main sources of growth of the small SLF union following its foundation in 1981 was its willingness to take up the individual grievances of the workforce, very much in the tradition of the vertical union of the Franco era.

The CCOO were organized in the 1960s by the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and workers' Roman Catholic groups to fight against the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and for labor rights (in opposition to the non-representative "vertical unions" in the Spanish Trade Union Organisation).