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LABOUR-SPAIN: Summer Vacation Not for Everyone

Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Aug 11 2004 (IPS) - The number of employees who sign temporary work contracts week after week, and thus have no right to paid vacation, is increasing among young people in Spain. But immigrant workers have even more to complain about, because they are offered no job contracts or benefits at all.

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In the province or “autonomous community” of Madrid, one of the most developed of the 17 that make up Spain, 80 percent of employment contracts for people under 30 are temporary.

Most of the contracts are signed on Monday, and last five days. Thus, the employee begins to work on the first day of the week, works through Friday, and the following Monday signs another contract.

That continues week after week, even if the employee works an entire year for the same company, according to a study by sociologist Pablo López de la Calle.

Even though under Spanish law, employees have the right to a month of paid vacation per year, under temporary labour contracts workers earn no paid vacation time.

According to López de la Calle, that right, which 20 years ago no business owner would have dared dispute, has now become ”a privilege for an ever-shrinking group of workers” due to the increasing use of temporary employment contracts.

”Worst of all is that among the young, this has been accepted as if it were something normal,” says the sociologist.

Another problem faced by workers in Spain is the question of child care, as more and more women join the workforce.

The complications are felt in an especially acute fashion in summertime, when children have three months of school vacation, while the parents have one month off, in the best of cases.

Parents must thus juggle child care during at least two months in the summertime, and tend to turn to relatives, especially grandparents.

Thirty-seven percent of women over 65 in Spain regularly care for their grandchildren, according to a paper presented by sociologist Lourdes Pérez in the second Congress on the Family in the 21st Century, which appeared in a book recently published by the Foundation of Aid Against Drug Addiction.

Parents also resort to other activities, like summer camp, sports activities and arts and crafts classes, to keep their children busy.

But few of the extracurricular activities are free, because not many public schools offer summertime activities.

The government should take note of this difficulty and adapt the school system to the needs of parents, organising activities for children free of cost, because society has changed, says trade unionist Francisco García with the Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) labour federation.

Meanwhile, there is still no solution in sight to the plight of undocumented foreign workers, who are needed in important economic sectors like construction and agriculture.

The number of “pateras” – small, flimsy boats used to traffic immigrants from North Africa – reaching the shores of Spain or intercepted by the coast guard is down this year.

The pateras bring undocumented immigrants to the Spanish mainland through the Strait of Gibraltar, in the Mediterranean, or to the Canary Islands from Morocco.

The reduction in the number of immigrants reaching Spanish coasts through that route is due to tighter police and border controls.

According to a spokesman for the Association of Immigrant Moroccan Workers in Spain (ATIME), the Strait of Gibraltar “is an immense killing-grounds, where 4,000 people died between 1997 and 2002.”

The deaths occur when pateras capsize, or when the people traffickers who own the boats throw their human cargo overboard to avoid being caught by the authorities.

Last week, one of the Strait’s victims was a nine-month-old baby. His body was found in the water after a boat crashed into the coast. His mother, who was identified by the infant carrier on her back, also drowned.

But the fact that less pateras are making it to Spain or are intercepted by the authorities has not stood in the way of an increase in irregular immigration.

In fact, a majority of immigrants arrive by land or air. In the past few years, besides the traditional flow of immigrants from North Africa, the number of migrants has increased from eastern Europe, especially from two countries that will join the European Union in 2007: Rumania and Bulgaria.

In this country of 40 million, the total number of foreign nationals, including both legal residents and undocumented immigrants, climbed from roughly 637,000 in 1998 to 2.66 million in 2003, and immigrants represent 6.2 percent of the population, according to the National Institute of Statistics.

Ecuadorians constitute 14.6 percent of the total, followed by Moroccans (14.2 percent). These two groups, along with Colombians, make up 40 percent of the immigrant population.

Most migrants work in agriculture or construction, without employment contracts, sending part of their earnings back to their home countries to help support their families.

A total of 300,000 Moroccans live in Spain with legal residency permits. A precise figure for the number of undocumented Moroccan immigrants is not available.