The Christian Working Youth (JOC), a lay apostolate movement of young workers linked to the Church, has announced its support for the general strike called across Spain for Wednesday, November 11. The call is led by CCOO, UGT, CGT and CNT and comes less than three weeks before the general elections. In a statement shared on social media, the organization expresses its “unwavering support” for the day, announces its participation in the mobilizations and also calls for a consumer strike. The text states that “this capitalist society must be stopped in its tracks,” an ideological formulation more typical of class struggle than of the Church’s Social Doctrine.
According to the statement, which the JOC published on its Instagram account, the strike is “the best tool we have as young people, workers and Christians” to express exhaustion with a social and economic situation the movement considers unsustainable. The organization thus explicitly links its Christian commitment to the protest, summarizing its position with the phrase “every young worker is worth more than all the gold in the world because she is a daughter of God.”
Vivienda, salarios y servicios públicos
The JOC places the housing crisis as one of the main expressions of inequality and links it to job insecurity and the “fear of emancipation” among young people. It argues that many people cannot plan their lives and that these difficulties are experienced as individual problems when, in its view, they have collective causes. Its demands include decent housing, “affordable prices,” secure employment and fair wages, as well as rent regulation and adequately funded public education and health services. These demands coincide point by point with the platform of the calling unions.
The statement also calls for structural changes that protect the dignity of people and the planet, and warns that “this moment of struggle must not end on November 11.” The organization connects its demands to the housing mobilizations in which it has taken part in recent times.
What the Social Doctrine says about strikes
The Magisterium recognizes the legitimacy of strikes, but with nuances that the JOC statement does not include. Saint John Paul II, in Laborem exercens (n. 20), describes it as an extreme means, to be used under specific conditions and within just limits. He also warns against its abuse, particularly when used for political purposes. The Church’s tradition, since Rerum novarum, has also rejected the logic of class struggle and has defended collaboration between labor and capital, not confrontation.
A prayer intention turned into a strike argument
The document recalls the request made by Leo XIV this November that wealth be placed “at the service of the common good.” That request is contained in his November prayer intention, and the JOC contrasts it with individualism and consumerism. The papal intention, however, is an invitation to pray for the proper use of wealth and makes no reference to strikes or specific mobilizations. Its use to support a protest called by trade unions represents a biased reading of the Pontiff’s words.
The strike, two weeks before the elections
The 24-hour general strike is called by unions such as CCOO, UGT, CGT and CNT together with tenants’ organizations, and focuses primarily on the housing crisis: rent-price controls, expansion of public housing stock and protection against evictions, along with wage and labor demands. It takes place just days before the general elections on November 29, and the PP has described it as a “political strike.” That timing raises the question of the extent to which an apostolate movement should join a mobilization with an obvious electoral reading.
The JOC’s support is not isolated within the ecclesial sphere: movements and entities of the Church in Catalonia, including the JOC of Catalonia and the Islands, have also joined the call, and Justice and Peace has recognized the legitimacy of the strike.