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LABOUR-SPAIN: Immigrants’ Plight Ignored by Unions Ahead of May Day

Tito Drago

MADRID, Apr 27 2007 (IPS) - The conditions faced by immigrants in Spain, who despite their contribution to the economy are the most vulnerable when it comes to labour rights, have not even been mentioned in the demands and grievances voiced by the country’s trade union federations as they prepare for May 1, International Labour Day.

The Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), which is close to the governing socialist party, and the pro-communist Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), the country’s two biggest unions, issued a joint statement Friday calling for labour equality and quality jobs, but without so much as a mention of the problems afflicting immigrant workers.

It is precisely quality employment that is the most pressing need of the immense majority of foreign nationals living in Spain, only a minority of whom have decent, well-paid jobs.

And with respect to equality, although foreign workers with legal job contracts outnumber those who have no contract, Spanish workers doing the same jobs are paid more and enjoy better benefits and working conditions.

Studies have shown that the influx of foreign workers has had a positive effect on the Spanish economy.

The Caixa de Catalunya bank, one of the country’s biggest savings banks, reported that Spain’s economy grew at an average rate of 2.6 percent a year from 1995 to 2005, but that without the contribution of immigrants, gross domestic product (GDP) would have fallen by 0.6 percent over the same period.

During that decade, immigrants contributed 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on average with their labour, according to the report by the bank, which is based in the northeastern province of Catalonia.

According to official figures, there are currently 2.6 million immigrants working in Spain – a country of 41 million – 1.8 million of whom are legally employed and pay into the social security system.

The rest have no job contracts, which not only means that they are contributing nothing towards their eventual retirement and have no right to unemployment insurance, but also condemns them to receiving lower wages. The majority of undocumented immigrants work in rural areas, the construction industry, and domestic service.

Ecuadorian immigrant Alberto Gómez, a construction worker at a building site in Madrid, told IPS that “I was living with my wife and three young children in Quito, where I was working but barely earned enough to survive.”

“Then a friend told me that there were some Spanish people offering work in Spain and that they also would loan you the money for the plane ticket,” he said.

“I talked to one of the Spanish guys and he told me that yes, they would lend me the money and that as soon as I got to Spain I would have a job. And it was true: as soon as I got here they took me to a rooming house where I share a room with other Ecuadorians, and I started to work.”

But no one had explained to him that in Spain he would not be able to obtain a job contract, and would not have the right to legal benefits, because he had failed to apply for a visa in Ecuador before flying over.

Now, if he decided to apply for a visa, he would have to return to Ecuador and carry out all of the paperwork there, “which is practically impossible, because of the cost of the journey and also because it could take over a year,” Gómez added.

So he works between eight and 10 hours a day and earns just over half of what Spanish workers or legal immigrants are paid for the same job.

“It’s enough to live on and to send something back to my family, but I can’t bring my wife and children over here, because I don’t have a residency permit and I can’t save enough for their tickets with what I earn,” he said.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the country with the largest number of migrants living in Spain is Ecuador.

But many would-be immigrants do not even make it into the country. The Paraguayan Embassy reported that in the first half of April alone, some 300 Paraguayans were deported from the Barajas international airport in Madrid.

Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte announced through the Paraguayan Embassy in Spain that he had cancelled an official visit scheduled for May 7-8 in protest against the policy applied in Madrid to immigrants from his country.

Women migrants face especially tough conditions. Many university graduates and professionals have no choice but to work in domestic service, in private homes, restaurants or hotels, because they are undocumented. And many other female migrants are forced into prostitution.

Joan Cantarero, former spokesperson for the national association of owners of escort agencies or brothels, told IPS that there are some 300,000 women in prostitution in the country, most of whom are from eastern Europe or Africa and many of whom are working in slavery conditions.

In many brothels, sex workers do not have the right to leave the premises, for example.

A majority of the women have been brought over by people traffickers, lured by promises of legal work, only to find on arrival in Spain that their passports have been seized by their “employers” and that they are held prisoner in their workplaces.

Of course, the problem is not exclusive to Spain. A study by the European Commission reported that forced prostitution is on the rise throughout the region.

The heads of the UGT and the CCOO, Cándido Méndez and José María Fidalgo, said in a press conference Friday that they were optimistic about labour conditions and underlined that there has been “an extremely significant reduction in temporary labour” and an increase in the number of people who are hired under indefinite-term employment contracts.

Méndez said this is the first time that statistics in Spain point to such a phenomenon, and that “never before has temporary labour dropped so much in one quarter.”

That, they said, is the result of the agreements signed by the trade union federations with employers associations and the government to reform the labour market, which went into effect on Jul. 1, 2006.

But the trade unionists also called for a modification of productive policies, with “injections of capital in technology and efforts to improve the formation of human capital,” to keep companies from relocating.

The announced relocation of Delphi, a company located in the southern city of Cádiz, has triggered strikes and protests because “the livelihoods of 4,000 families are at risk,” they added.