Boujemaa and his two workmates at a cherry farm in Almacelles queued yesterday to get a bed in Hall 3 of the Fira de Lleida, where the City Council has installed, for yet another year, its provision for seasonal workers. At nine in the morning and after three hours in line to register at the hostel, I was in a hurry to get to the train station. He used to sleep behind, out in the open. From there he goes to Almacelles every day. “At the station a friend picks us up by car to go to work. We pay him five euros a day, ”he says. He charges 70.
The municipal elections delayed the Aplec del Caragol, which is held in Camps Elisis, where the pavilion is located, by a week, and the party delayed attention to seasonal workers by a week. A week is the time he has been sleeping in his car, with a friend, Dahou, an Algerian man who places anti-hail mesh poles in a town in Segrià and who got the job through a Temporary Work Company (ETT). . “Here we can sleep, in the car you wake up full of mosquito bites and tired,” he says.
Most of the seasonal workers who lined up yesterday at the door of the shelter are already working, unlike previous campaigns, when most neither worked nor had permission to do so. The City Council distributed 60 sleeping tickets on the first day, those who arrived later, at least twenty, will have to register again today. The City Council, through a company that manages the device, offers 122 beds, showers, car laundry, luggage storage, breakfast and dinner in the pavilion. Yesterday’s lentil salad, chicken casserole with rice and yogurt. Throughout the province, thousands of seasonal workers are now expected. Last year there were about 18,000.
La Paeria has a single service office for legal advice, intercultural mediation and trade union support and has 99 places in furnished homes of the Municipal Urban Agenda Company (EMAU). These apartments are intended for farm workers in a situation of economic precariousness with a labor contract. They pay a deposit of 100 euros and five euros per night to be paid weekly.
The president of Asaja Lleida, Pere Roqué, assures that the seasonal workers who arrive and have work permits all work because they are arriving less as a result of the prolongation of the harvests in the south, where in recent years late varieties of strawberry and the coincidence of the Lleida and Murcia campaigns
This year there is a good harvest in Segrià and Noguera, areas that, unlike Urgell and Pla, do not depend on the Canal d’Urgell, which closed the main canal on April 25 and opened this Monday for survival irrigation of the trees. Fruita amb Justícia Social agrees with Asaja that fewer seasonal workers arrive each year, “there are late strawberry varieties and more red berries, and seasonal workers prefer to avoid Lleida if they can,” explains its spokesperson, Gemma Casal.
From Joves Agricultors i Ramaders de Catalunya (JARC), its president, Joan Carles Massot, affirms that this year farmers are having difficulties finding seasonal workers as work to thin some fruit trees coincides with the cherry harvest. “The truth is that if you go to ETTs to ask for workers, if you are not a regular, the companies tell you that they do not have temporary workers,” he affirms.
There are many who arrive with an offer of employment and lodging at the home of the farmer who hires them. Four Moroccan workers arrived in Aitona a few weeks ago to work on the farm owned by Jordi Vidal, the coordinator of the Asaja sweet fruit sector. They collect figs with the three workers who run the farm all year round. Three of them sleep in a house provided by the farmer and another in the house of his relatives from the village.
In Alcarràs, where between 3,000 and 4,000 seasonal workers have arrived, the City Council has made the municipal shelter with 96 beds available to businesses and farmers in the town. It already hosts 80. It costs 5 euros per person per night, and includes a space to sleep, electricity and water. The consistory invoices the service to the company or person in charge of the agricultural exploitation, which can pass on the cost to the worker.
To house seasonal workers, the Generalitat announced in March a call for aid for the construction of new private accommodation and the expansion and rehabilitation of existing ones for working people with the contributions of Afrucat UP, JARC, ASAJA, which the Government expects to come out this month.
