Friday, March 29

The shoe dressers ask for a decent life in Brussels: “We were girls when we started working 50 years ago”


Half a century working 12 hours a day, without retirement or social rights. It is the life of some 17,000 dressers in Elche, women who work at home or in workshops making shoes for major Spanish brands. And this Tuesday they have come to Brussels invited by the MEP of Anticapitalistas, Miguel Urbán, to meet with the European Commission and members of the European Parliament and convey their fight for a pension and decent work.

“We were girls when we started working more than 50 years ago. We were 12, 14 years old when we started in the factories. And today, when five decades have passed, we are still in the same situation, in the same situation of precarious work, without contributions and in a submerged industry”, explains Isabel Matute, spokesperson for the Elche Sideboard Association: “And it is now when we have We have to retire soon, but it is not possible because there is no right to a pension because they have not made the contracts required by the regulations, our agreement, either in home work or in the workshops where production has been outsourced”.

In a sector that has been nourished by the shadow economy and that in 2017 had a turnover of 2,200 million in the Valencian Community alone, says the association.

We are condemned to social exclusion“, laments Matute: ”Nothing is fulfilled, on paper the agreements are very good, the laws are very good, but it is of no use to us if they are not applied later, either politically or of other. The fact is that the different governments that we have had up to now have done absolutely nothing, and we are completely defenseless, in social exclusion, which is what all women in this sector are being condemned to.”

Matute explains that from his association “complaints are continually being made, and there are sentences with businessmen sentenced to prison terms, because it is a crime, it is a crime against the rights of the worker. But, despite everything that is happening, there is no way to break the established system of underground industry, surely because of the amount of millions of euros that are moved. The Labor Inspectorate goes to the workshops, they are closed and the following week they reopen under a different name. And since the owners are insolvent, no matter how large the fine is, they will not pay it and absolutely nothing will happen to them. They reopen the workshop and that’s it. That’s what happens all the time.”

“It is the same model, to understand us, that is used in Southeast Asia when there is outsourcing of production”, adds Urbán: “It is not directly the big brand that hires, and that is the key element. These people, the shoe workers, the dressers, are hired by subcontractors. They are those big brands that are not seen or affected by the stain of not decent work to get our shoes out, but even when they systematically violate labor legislation, both European and Spanish, in the end they have figureheads, who are the ones who They take care not to pay even those kinds of fines.”

“We collected 50,000 signatures in record time for the acknowledgment of the years worked by shoe dressers and workers,” recalls Matute, “we took it to the Minister of Labor, who told us that it was not her responsibility. So we took them to Inclusion and Social Security, and to this day, almost a year has passed, Mr. [José Luis] Escrivá has not bothered to answer us”.

Urbán explained that the European Commission has transmitted that “the only way to try, in quotes, for the Commission to investigate was to present a complaint to the Commission, which has to be an organization, in this case the association that they themselves have constituted. Then there is the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament, where it is being requested, after the appearance takes place, that there be a mission with recommendations to the Government of Spain so that it tackles this problem”.

“We started working when we were 14 years old”, adds Matute: “40, 50 years working and we can have contributions for three years, six years in my case. And there are even colleagues who do not have a single quoted day and have spent their entire lives. And, what’s more, they are separated women who only have what they earn. They should be retired, but they continue to work with little power, with all the illnesses of our profession and there they are who cannot even retire. And that is why we are so sick, because they are marathon days that can last from ten to 11 to 11, 12 hours a day. All this daily, even Saturdays and Sundays, depends on the need to make that order”.

Are there cases of compañeras who have denounced and there have been consequences against them? “Indeed”, says Matute: “Nothing came to light, I lost my job. And there are many colleagues, like me, who have lost their jobs. In fact, we knew it was going to happen, but it was enough to put up with this situation and for everyone to talk about feminism when there is such a serious problem against women.”

Matute recounts the illnesses they suffer from: “There are innumerable: cervical problems, back problems, circulation problems, carpal tunnel problems, pinched nerves. We have shoulder operations, knee problems, hip problems, psychological problems due to the mistreatment to which we are subjected and due to the uncertain situation that we continually live in”.

A colleague, Soledad Cano, points out: “I have been working since I was 13 years old, I have been working for 51 years and what I have contributed with 64 years does not reach eight years, and I will not have a pension of any kind. And the illnesses we have are never recognized, because you go to the doctor and the doctor says: ‘Ma’am, we’ll discharge you. And what does he work on?’ And you can’t answer: ‘I don’t work for any company. I have a machine at home and I work 12 hours a day, 365 days a year. Everyone knows that we work from home, that we work for very important brands.”

“I myself have lost 36% of the peripheral vision of my left eye,” says Francisca Matute, “but it is due to a problem of thrombosis, because we spend so many hours sitting on the machine that we have serious problems with leg swelling.” and circulation.

And how much is paid per hour? “It costs €3 if you are very lucky”; says Isabel Matute: “The last job I did was 1.50 an hour. They offer below what corresponds to what the law stimulates, so you have no choice but to work those ten, 11 or 12 hours to reach what is the minimum wage by agreement.

Encarnación López explains: “I have been a dresser since I was 13 years old, plus the apprenticeship I had before. At the age of 13 they bought me the machine and I started at home. I have been listed for nine years, which I think is not enough, and I am 64 years old. And apart from that I have a herniated disc, I have bad cervicals, the vertebrae are drying out, they are mounting, the knee is bothered and the hips are disqualifying.

“We are used to, why are we going to say anything else, that everyone speaks hypocritically about what matters to people’s rights. And in the face of that, we have said that we are going to fight so that your face falls in shame because you are hypocrites, because you are saying one thing and then they do not comply with it. That only happens to us because we are women.”



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