Poor working and living conditions leave workers vulnerable to
Covid, but most are more worried about not being able to work than
being ill
“I do not understand why these people are not being rehoused in better accommodation. Do we
have to wait for them to get Covid instead of looking for a much more dignified place, with
adequate hygienic conditions?” says, Diego Crespo, a Forward Andalucía party MP.
Hassan knows that his work and living conditions make him vulnerable to becoming infected
with Covid-19. When asked whether he is supplied with PPE at work, Hassan laughs. “Gloves and
face masks in the greenhouse? Temperature checks?” he says. “They don’t give you anything.”
Like many of the people living in the settlements, he say he is more scared of not being able to
work than they of becoming ill. If he can’t send money home, his children don’t eat.
One groups of workers say that they lost their jobs after testing positive for Covid-19 and
quarantining at home. Muhammad, a farm worker from Morocco, said that when he and others
had recovered and returned to work, some of them were told there was no work for them.
“When I contracted Covid-19, I’d already spent two years working for this company without
papers and two years on a temporary contract, but when I came back they said there is nothing
for me here,” he says. He says he and the other workers who did not get their jobs back also did
not receive the sick pay they were entitled to as essential workers.
The Soc-Sat union, which represents agricultural workers across Almería, says the failure to
provide farm workers with basic PPE speaks to the culture of impunity that surrounds the
mistreatment of Spain’s migrant workforce.
“Around 80% of fruit companies in Almería are breaking the law,” says José García Cuevas, a SocSat union leader. The union says that across the region, widespread fraud is being perpetrated on
the farm workers. “People will work 25 days but their employers will only count 10,” he says. “Or
when you look at the payslips, it says €58 a day, which is minimum wage but that’s not what the
worker is receiving.” He says that according to figures from the General Union of Workers, workers
lose out on up to €50m of wages every year.
For decades, the exploitation and abuse of migrant workers in Spain has been widely condemned
by UN officials and human rights campaigners, but to little effect.