Administration of Seasonal Foreign Worker Admissions to Huelva’s Strawberry Agriculture
DRAFT
By Piotr Plewa University of Delaware
Preliminary draft of the presentation for the “Immigration Reform: Implications for Farmers, Farm Workers, and Communities”, Washington D.C., USA, May 21-22, 2009.
1
TABLE OF CO TE TS
MIGRANT LABOR IN HUELVA UNDER LAISSEZ FAIRE, 1985-2000.……………5
MIGRANT LABOR IN HUELVA DURING THE QUEST FOR CONTROL, 2000- PRESENT………………………………………………………………………...…….…9
Evolution of contracting abroad: 2000-2007...... 9 Determination of labor shortages………………………………………………………...12 Recruitment………...…………………………………………………………………….21 Transportation……………………………………………………………………………..5 Housing and social integration…………………………………………………...... 26 Work……………………………………………………………………………...... 31 Planting……………...…………………………………………………………...32 Early harvest……………...……………………………………………………...33 Pre peak…………………………………………………………………………..36 Peak………………………………………………………………………………39 Post peak…………………………………………………………………………44
ADMISSIONS TO HUELVA: A MODEL FOR EMULATION?...... …45
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………...…………………………………………………………..48
2
ABSTRACT
This paper reviews the evolution of seasonal foreign worker admissions to Huelva’s strawberry agriculture. It inquires about the sustainability of seasonal foreign workers to Huelva’s strawberry sector. It suggests that, nested within the European Commission’s Global Approach to
Migration, seasonal foreign worker admissions have been expected to play not only an economic but also a political role. The expectation the admissions will both sustain the production of
Spain’s “red gold” as well as reduce irregular migration will likely shield seasonal admissions to
Huelva’s strawberry agriculture from the migration curbs declared in response to the economic crisis. However, the privileged position of Huelva’s admissions will last only as long as they are able to prevent irregular migration, the main motif, behind their backing by Spanish and EU authorities.
3 Spain is the third largest producer of fresh strawberries in the world. About ninety percent of Spanish strawberries are grown in the province of Huelva, in south-western Andalucía. Out of approximately 60 000 strawberry harvesters contracted every year, over half have been foreign workers recruited directly in their countries of origin. The onset of the 2008/09 economic crisis led the Spanish government to curb foreign worker admissions. But the economic fluctuations are only one of the many factors conditioning migrant labor supply to Spanish agriculture.
Among others is the seasonal foreign worker admissions’ perceived ability to manage irregular migration.
It is under the pretext of reducing irregular migration that Huelva strawberry growers have been able to secure European Commission’s political and financial backing for the administration of a quasi-independent seasonal worker program, at the same time that the Spanish government attempted to monopolize control over admissions since 2000, after a decade of employer control during the 1990s. While the economic crisis will likely curtail the supply of labor into year-round jobs, considered to be attractive to native and migrant workers alike, it is less likely to reduce the supply of labor into seasonal jobs, considered to be attractive to migrant workers only.
The predilection for rotation – over settlement - oriented migration policy has been demonstrated since 2006, when the Spanish government excluded seasonal admissions from annual quotas while continuing to cap year-round admissions. When announcing the curbs on foreign worker admissions in response to the economic crisis, the Ministry of Labor promised to allow Huelva farmers to bring 6000 strawberry planters and 35 000 strawberry harvesters for the
2008/09 season. By contrast, admissions of workers entitled to 1 year-long work permits as was reduced from 15731 (659 in agriculture) in 2008 to 901 (24 in agriculture) in 2009 (MTAS,
2009).
The goal of this paper is to examine the mechanisms of seasonal worker admissions to
Huelva’s strawberry agriculture in order to draw lessons for other countries considering
4 expansion of seasonal worker admissions to reduce irregular migration. Is there evidence that seasonal worker program that began in Huelva and then was touted for emulation elsewhere in
Spain and Europe, could reconciliate the interests of migrants and employers and ameliorate the management of labor migration?
The study consists of three parts. The first part analyzes privately-controlled foreign labor contracting in Huleva (1985-2000). The second part analyzes the emergent partially state- and partially privately - controlled contracting in Huelva (2001-present). Specifically, this part examines five features of Huelva’s seasonal foreign worker admissions: (1) determination of labor shortages; (2) recruitment procedures; (3) workers’ transportation; (4) housing and social integration; (5) working conditions. The third part briefly discusses the two major challenges of the seasonal foreign worker admissions to Huelva: the difficulty of maintaining a steady labor supply from Eastern Europe and the resulting difficulty of preventing irregular migration in the context of admissions from outside of Europe. The study is based on fieldwork conducted in
Huelva during the 2007/2008 strawberry season (December, 2007-April 2008).
FOREIG WORKERS I HUELVA U DER LAISSEZ FAIRE, 1985 2000
Crucial to the growth of Huelva’s strawberry agriculture was the ability of growers to secure new labor supply. The first laborers came from among growers’ family and community members. As these began to move on to less labor-intensive positions (warehouse operators, production managers, cooperative workers), they were replaced by day commuters from nearby provinces of Sevilla, la Sierra and Cádiz, as well as, by Portuguese Gypsies. However, according to farmers, these commuters found better jobs after Spain joined the EU in 1986 and after Spanish and Portuguese workers gained freedom of labor mobility in the EU in 1993.
It is hard to ascertain whether labor shortages were as acute as farmers claimed. On the one hand, commuters from nearby provinces continued to play an important role in Huelva’s strawberry haversting until the end of the 1990s (table 1). On the other hand, employers argued
5 that local workers made themselves available for no more than 35 days, the period necessary to obtain agricultural unemployment benefits (UPA, 2007). During the 1990s, the proportion of migrants in strawberry harvesting began to increase. Until 1991, Moroccans did not need visas to enter Spain and most shuttled back and forth between northern Morocco and Southern Spain as petty traders. The imposition of visas forced them to look for more sedentary jobs. Expanding strawberry agriculture offered easy access to the bottom-most tier of the Spanish labor market.
Table 1 Legally contracted labor force in Huelva’s strawberry agriculture
Origin 1997/1998 1998/1999 1999/2000
Huelva province 25 000 26 000 24 000 Sevilla province 10 000 14 500 14 000 Cádiz province 9 000 12 600 12 000 Other provinces 3 000 1 500 No data available Foreign 3 000 3 000 5 000 Total 50 000 57 600 55 000
Source: S.O.C., 1998, 1999, 2000. Defensor del Pueblo Andaluz, 2001 in Gordo, M. 2003:5
Since the 1990s Huelva agriculture has developed a dual, legal and illegal migrant workforce. Most legal workers were those who were able to legalize their status through legalization or quota admission. Most illegal workers were those who worked on tourist visas, whose permits had expired or who could not find an employer to sponsor them. During the 1990s, it was common that employers would issue migrants contracts if migrants agreed to pay all the costs associated with the procedure (Gordo, 2007; UGT, 2007b). The contracts were one year long and tied the worker to the same employer. Since most employers did not contribute to migrants’ social security, migrants found it difficult to adjust their status (UGT, 2007b).
Nonetheless, both migrants and employers found these contracts relatively beneficial. Migrants gained legal access to work in Spain. Employers found workers who were loyal and flexible.
However, not all employers could or wanted to give irregular migrants contracts. Migrant workers who could not find-long term employment with one employer would follow the harvest
6 around the country, the same way the Spanish jornaleros did. 1 They would arrive in a community where the harvest was about to start and make themselves available to employers either in the fields or in town plazas, where employers would pick however many workers they needed for the day (Guardia Civil, 2007). Employers who did not want to risk being caught contracting illegally could use the services of intermediaries.
Regardless of the contracting method, workers were often underpaid, either directly by an employer or by the intermediary who would collect wages for the entire crew and distribute them to individual workers after having charged a commission. Sometimes migrants would arrive so early in the season that even having been contracted they did not have enough hours to pay for food and housing (UGT, 2007a).
The parallel use of both legal and illegal workers throughout the 1990s helped Huelva growers expand planting areas and production (table 2). Between 1994 and 1999, when the quotas served as a backdoor to legalization, Huelva farmers expanded plantings from 4700 ha (1993/94) to 8073 ha (1998/99). But, while agricultural communities tolerated irregular contracting for economic reasons, they feared it for social reasons, since most of Huelva’s small towns did not have either sufficient housing nor social and medical services to accommodate seasonal workers.
Each time a harvest was about to start, rural areas across Spain witnessed the growth of asentamientos - make-shift camps erected by itinerant workers for the season.
Table 2 Evolution of strawberry production in Huelva, 1995 2000 (metric tons)
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 250 000 198 000 248 110 285 000 334 000 306 000 Source: Gordo, M. (2001: 41)
1 Typically, these mobile harvesters would divide the year between spring strawberry harvests in Huelva; summer melon, pear, peaches and apple harvest in Lérida; autumn grape picking in la Rioja and winter olive picking in Jaen.
7 In 1997, the growh of asentamientos and the perception of insecurity led to the accord in which the representatives the Ministry of Labor, employer organizations (COAG, ASAJA), labor unions (UGT, CC. OO) and municipal governments (FEMP) agreed that employers wishing to contract out of province workers had to select them in their places of origin and organize transportation and housing. Two years later, the accord was extended to foreign workers and in
2000 it was codified by the Ley de Extranjería 8/2000.
The transition period between contracting on the spot and contracting in the place of origin was marked by the growth of various forms of intermediaries who would charge either employers or migrants or both for labor matching. According to Guardia Civil sources, the peak of intermediary activity fell in the 2000-2002 period, when employers feared being caught contracting directly and when the role of an accredited employers’ organization in contracting was just taking off. Whether contracting was conducted through a trusted worker, unaccredited agent or a trafficker, it was the migrant who paid the ultimate price for the contract. Furthermore, the more difficult it was for a migrant to enter and work in Spain legally, the higher the price. For instance, during the first half of the 2000s, when Romanians did not have the right to reside in the
EU and their networks in Spain were only beginning to form, they figured prominently among the victims of such intermediaries (Guardia Civil, 2007). In 2007, when Romanians gained the right to reside in Spain legally and their networks consolidated, many became self-employed. By 2007, the focus of unscrupulous merchants of labor was expected to shift further south and east, to Sub-
Saharan Africa and Ukraine (Guardia Civil, 2007).
On the other extreme, by making it difficult for individual employers to contract foreign workers themselves, contratación en origen strengthened the role of accredited employer organizations. These organizations negotiate the number of workers to be admitted on employers’ behalf, lobby authorities to sign bilateral agreements with the countries of origin, select workers, organize their transportation to and from Spain and attempt to eliminate abuses. The principal labor contractors for Huelva strawberry growers have been Freshuelva, COAG, ASAJA,
8 Asociación de Citricultores, CORA and UPA. In 2000, one such organization (CORA) brought to Huelva 540 workers from Poland, even though labor flows between these two countries were not yet regulated by any governmental agreement. Since then other agricultural organizations have become involved in labor contracting and the numbers of temporary foreign workers brought to Huelva’s agriculture has been growing (table 3).
Table 3 Huelva’s seasonal foreign workers contracted directly in the countries of origin
Country 2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 2005/2006 2006/07 2007/08
Bulgaria 0 0 0 508 604 941 2 577 4 000 Colombia 0 149 177 105 82 8 2 0 Ecuador 0 0 15 8 64 26 12 0 Morocco 198 336 95 635 1094 2 330 1 946 12 000 Poland 540 4 954 7 535 8 811 7 361 9 796 - 3500 Romania 0 970 4 178 10 933 13 186 19 153 26 278 11 000 Ukraine 0 0 0 0 0 0 724 4000 Total 738 6 409 12 000 21 000 22 391 32 254 31 539 2 34 500 3
Source: Marquez, J. A.; Gordo, M., 2007: 13; El País, 2008 for the 2007/08 data.
The consolidation of contracting in the hands of accredited employers’ organizations has helped to eliminate many of the abuses in foreign labor contracting of the pre contratación en origin era. However, employers have found contratación en origen too bureaucratic. In consequence, while some began to look for less labor-intensive methods of production or to limit acreage, others attempted to regain greater control over foreign labor supply.
FOREIG WORKERS I HUELVA DURI G THE QUEST FOR CO TROL, 2000 PRESE T
Evolution of contracting abroad: 2000-2007
The first pilot effort to contract directly from the countries of origin took place in 1999, when Catalan farmers grouped in Unió de Payesos recruited fruit harvesters in Colombia. The
2 This total does not reflect Poles, so the total admitted was larger 3 For the 34 500 contracted in 2008 31 000 came.
9 program aimed to emulate admissions of Spanish grape harvesters to France prior to Spain’s accession to the EC. Despite growers’ satisfaction with Colombians, the high cost of transportation mitigated against the expansion of recruitment in Latin America (Ayuntamiento de
Cartaya, 2007).
Given the high costs of transportation from Latin America, and fragile diplomatic relations with Morocco, in 2000 a pilot program was launched in Poland. Despite protests by
Moroccan workers against what they perceived to be an attempt to replace them, Spanish authorities judged the program to be satisfactory. However, as the UK and Ireland offered better- paid and less-labor intensive jobs for Poles, fewer Poles were attracted to work in Spain.
Following Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004, work in Huelva’s strawberry agriculture remained attractive to those Poles who do not have the social and monetary capital to find housing and work in the UK or Ireland.
In 2005, Huelva growers’ recruitment efforts shifted to Bulgaria and Romania. In
Bulgaria, bureaucracy and poor selection control became so problematic that Bulgaria has been considered a reserve rather than the principal pool of labor. In Romania, active government involvement had a double effect. On the one hand, it helped to prevent corruption during the selection process. On the other hand, it limited recruitment. Fearing that that the outflow of labor would hamper foreign investment and make it difficult to use EU development funds, the
Romanian government stopped encouraging seasonal work in Spain. However, the weaker program participation rate could have been also caused by the right to self-employment in the EU gained by Romanians citizens after January 1 st , 2007.
In 2006, the acquisition of the European Commission’s AENEAS grant by Cartaya’s mayor Juan Millán repositioned recruitment efforts back to Morocco. The comprehensive financing and logistical organization has made AENEAS recruitment the most dynamically developing seasonal worker program in Spain. By January 2009, 9 097 new and 8 000 Moroccan workers were selected for the 2008/09 strawberry harvest in Huelva (Huelva Información, 2009).
10 Nonetheless, the high propensity of Moroccans to “leak out” to other sectors has caused that growers grouped under AENEAS Cartaya program to continue to search for other nationalities.
The Spanish Ministry of Labor encourages recruitment from the countries with which
Spain has signed bilateral labor agreements to avoid the growth of unauthorized intermediaries, corruption, abuses of workers’ rights and other unexpected outcomes. Employers can recruit in countries with which there are no agreements, but they are likely to find it more bureaucratic, insecure and costly, since they must obtain authorization and cannot count on governmental legal support and subventions. If a number of employer organizations is interested in recruitment in a country with which Spain has not signed labor agreement or a memorandum of undertanding, they can propose that the government negotiate such an an agreement or ask for exceptional pilot recruitment in this country in the meantime. Such was the case with recruitment in Senegal and
Ukraine (MTAS, 2007).
The first Senegalese temporary workers were admitted to Spain before a bilateral labor agreement was signed, as an exception conceded to Spanish fishing organizations. Since the winter of 2006, representatives of construction, cleaning and restaurants as well as Huelva strawberry growers lobbied for a labor agreement in order to expand recruitment to these sectors
(Plewa, 2007: 31; UPA, 2007). The agreement negotiated in Senegal in the summer of 2007 paved the way for the recruitment of some 4000 workers, 700 of whom were to work in Huelva’s strawberry agriculture in 2008. The two principal Senegalese labor unions – UNSAS and CNTS hope that the program will help to control illegal migration. Nonetheless, they fear that the number of interested to work in Spain could exceed the 4000 visas offered causing corruption of selection and the growth of unauthorized recruiters. According to Handy Gueye (UNSAS) and
Ndiouga Wade (CNTS), the government has neither consulted selection criteria nor clarified what role Senegalese labor unions will have in program administration (Odiel Información, 2007: 18).
Throughout 2007, the Spanish government attempted to negotiate a bilateral labor agreement with Ukraine, but political instability made it difficult. Nonetheless, in response to
11 farmers’ claims that, without these workers, Spanish agriculture will not be able to cope with labor shortages, the Ministry of Labor authorized Huelva growers to conduct recruitment “at their own risk”. The UGT fears that unless authorities overcome the differences which put the bilateral labor agreement in crisis, the administration of selection in Ukraine will be as intransparent as in
Bulgaria. According to UGT, Ukrainian Employment Services have been partly independent from the Ministry of Labor and thus will be harder to control (UGT, 2007a).
The UGT and CC. OO fear that neither Ukrainian nor Senegalese recruitment schemes will work out as planned. They charge that transportation will be expensive and that bureaucracy and corruption will complicate admissions administration. Consequently, the tri-partite program administration involving the unions, employer groups and the Spanish government will lose out to private recruiters (UGT, 2007a; CC. OO, 2007).
Determination of labor shortages
In order to contract foreign workers Spanish agricultural employers must demonstrate that there are no adequate and available Spanish, EU or legally residing foreign workers to take the jobs offered. There are three main labor market tests: (1) quota ( contingente ); (2) register of unattractive jobs ( registero de dificil cobertura ); (3) ES certification ( certificación negativa ).
Article 50 of the Royal Decree 2393/2004 authorizes employers to address labor shortages through ES certification if the job they offer has not been included in the quota or in the register. This is the case with admissions of seasonal workers to strawberry agriculture. The responsibility for the certification is vested with the regional ES. However, regional ES have ceded certification competences to provincial and local ES. The decentralization of ES certification responsibility down to provincial and local ES has facilitated the development of
“exceptional”, often informal, certification procedures based on “exceptional” circumstances.
12 In Huelva, where demand for foreign strawberry harvesters has been large and growing, a
Labor Migration Taskforce has been created to assist ES in the certification process. The Huelva
Labor Migration Taskforce has been composed of the representatives of provincial ES, major labor unions (UGT, CC. OO), employer organizations (COAG, ASAJA, UPA-CORA,
Freshuelva, ACPH), and central, regional and local governments (Ministry of Labor, Junta de
Andalucía, FAMP).
Employers and employer organizations seeking to certify labor shortages must apply at the very latest 105 days before the expected admission of a foreign worker because ES certification procedure takes 15 days and the provincial Labor Office reserves at least 90 days for processing the application for foreign workers. While provincial ES offices allow the applications to be filed by individual employers, provincial Labor Offices require that employers who contract for less than ten workers apply through accredited employer organizations. Thus while employers are free to choose between applying for ES certification directly and through employer organizations, the vast majority use the services of employer organizations.
Whether employers choose to apply directly or through employer organizations affects the information they will need to provide, who will test the labor market for them, and how as well as what type of certification will be issued. Employers applying for certification on their own file an ES-designed work offer form (documento de oferta) with the local ES. Local ES analysts test the labor market for them and the local ES director issues certification. Employers applying for certification via employer organizations file an organization-designed petition for foreign worker form ( petición de trabajadores extranjeros contratados en sus paises de origen ) with their organization. The members of the Labor Migration Taskforce negotiate a blanket certification for them with the provincial ES director who is a member of the Labor Migration Taskforce.
Certification requests submitted through employer organizations are certified through the
Labor Migration Taskforce. The members of the taskforce agree that workers present in Spain
13 are not interested in harvesting strawberries and assume that besides the expensive hydroponic production no other alternatives are available.
The goal of the Taskforce is to ensure that employers do not ask for more workers than necessary for the area planted and that they offer a job to any national worker interested in it. The members of the Taskforce do not recognize work offers from employers who were not able to provide their workers with the full stipulated employment during the previous season (UGT,
2008; CC. OO, 2008).
The Taskforce recognizes that some of the jobs offered in strawberry agriculture could attract unemployed and itinerant workers moving between crops across Spain according to the harvest cycle. Hence, the director of provincial ES participating in certification requires employer organizations to encourage their members to contract any unemployed or itinerant workers who will ask for employment throughout the entire duration of the harvest. Some employers comply, others do not.
When offered a choice between contracting a local or a foreign worker, Huelva employers prefer local workers, because workers from the same province do not require free housing and their transportation costs are low. However, when offered a choice between out of province and foreign workers, Huelva employers prefer foreign workers because the costs of their transportation and housing tend to be offset by their potential to stay on the job during the entire season. Andalucía agricultural workers who have worked for 35 days qualify for 180 days of unemployment benefits and many are said to leave as soon as they accumulate the necessary 35 days (subsidio agrario).
Local, provincial, regional and national ES administrators informally acknowledge that they cannot force the out-of province Spanish workers to take poorly-paid and difficult jobs, such as those in strawberry harvesting, suspecting that this would “transfer poverty from one province to another” (INEM, 2008). Even if jobs were better paid and mechanized, ES administrators fear that the out-of province Spanish workers would not be happy performing them due to separation
14 from family as well as inadequate infrastructure provided to temporary workers (housing, childcare services etc.). Paradoxically, the same working and living conditions that are considered to be inadequate for Spanish workers are considered to be adequate for foreign workers. ES administrators are aware of the undeclared work that many of the unemployed perform in their hometowns. “Humanitarian considerations” favor letting Spanish workers remain in their provinces while collecting unemployment benefits.
Strawberry growers maintain that labor shortages have emerged as the most important obstacle to production (Freshuelva, 2007). In their view, rural exodus and declining fertility decimated rural labor pools since the 1980s. Some rural people opted for less-labor intensive activities, principally planting, and often for the short time necessary to collect unemployment benefits (UPA, 2007). Others preferred less seasonal jobs in construction and services (COAG,
2007). The attempts to supply agriculture with foreign workers present in Spain brought meager effects. According to COAG, some thirty percent of those legalized to work in agriculture in
2005 left the sector after one year (García, 2007). Consequently, only a small proportion of the estimated 60 000 workers needed to harvest Huelva’s strawberries and raspberries each year can be found locally (Revenga, 2007).
Growers have been more interested in the increased supply of labor at specific moments of production rather than all the time. To minimize the costs associated with migrants’ housing, undertime and minimum employment, the selection committees have been choosing both
“selected” and “reserve” workers and requested secondary recruitment in countries where labor supply is abundant (e.g. Morocco) to atone for unsatisfactory recruitment in the countries where labor supply is scarce (e.g. Romania) (tables 4 and 5). The selected workers are kept on call.
However, given that some of the “reserve” workers refuse to wait in uncertainty, employers have favored admitting workers for the maximum period allowed and then moving them from one crop to another.
15 Table 4 First selection of Huelva strawberry harvesters in Morocco 2006/2007 harvest
Candidates who Selecting Interviewed Selected Reserve Rejected signed up for Employer selection Organization
ASAJA 2143 1372 281 490 FRESHUELVA 1529 1070 185 274 4766 CORA 90 61 10 19 CITRICULTORES 133 91 8 34
TOTAL 3895 2594 484 817
Source: Ayuntamiento de Cartaya
Table 5 Second selection of Huelva strawberry harvesters in Morocco 2006/2007 harvest
Candidates who Selecting Interviewed Selected Reserve Rejected signed up for Employer selection Organization
ASAJA 631 446 138 47 FRESHUELVA 1455 1126 170 159 2734 CORA 4 - - - - CITRICULTORES 104 64 14 26
TOTAL 2190 1636 322 232
Source: Ayuntamiento de Cartaya
The growers’ principal concern has been that labor shortages cause unharvested produce to rot in the fields. But market prices have been at least as strong of a factor as the availability of labor in determining whether the fruit will be harvested. In 2006, when the price of strawberries was considered advantageous, Huelva growers harvested all of the fruit, even though they could contract only eighty-three percent (30 000) of workers they had requested (36 000) (table 6). In previous years, the price of fruit was lower and, even though growers could contract as many workers as they had requested, they left the fruit unpicked (UGT, 2007a)
16 Table 6 Average strawberry prices paid to farmers
Year Price (€/kg)
2002 0.68 2003 0.73 2004 0.76 2005 0.86 2006 1.06 Source: Junta de Andalucía in USDA, 2007.
According to labor unions, labor shortages are very difficult to quantify, therefore, the syndicates have been more interested in the impact of foreign worker admissions on working conditions than in the absolute numbers admitted. Given the short history of migration to Huelva, little is still known about the impact of foreign worker admissions on working conditions in
Huelva’s strawberry agriculture. Some union observers trust that work inspections and employer sanctions have been effective and will continue to be, even if more migrant workers are admitted into Spanish agriculture (CC. OO, 2007b). Others point to the differences between collective labor agreements in sectors where foreign workers have been channeled and where they have not, and hypothesize that working conditions have been more stagnant in the former than in the latter
(UGT, 2007a, UGT, 2007b). Some union observers postulate that admissions of foreign workers have been compatible with the number of jobs generated by the Spanish economy and believe that the good qualifications of foreign workers coming to Spain will allow them to eventually move to the positions compatible with their skills (CC.OO, 2007b). Others warn that the proportion of low-qualified workers among Huelva strawberry harvesters has been on the increase (Cruz Roja, 2007). They argue that, according to social security registers, the qualified
Polish women who came to Spain in 2000 and 2001 have found it difficult to leave agriculture.
Furthermore, the first who have been laid off in construction, each time the sector faced difficulties, were migrants (UGT, 2007b).
4 CORA did not participate in the secondary selection
17 In an attempt to help employers minimize labor shortages, some labor union representatives have suggested that employers raise wages, ameliorate working conditions in the sector, and if need be, switch to less-labor intensive crops. While officially employer organizations have been open to these suggestions, unofficially they have questioned the purpose of engaging in costly and complex reforms as long as the situation in agriculture is less dramatic than they claim and as long as they succeed in inflating labor shortages to offset the cuts by the provincial commission, DGI, and the countries of origin (anonymous employer organization,
2007).
As far as higher wages are concerned, employers have claimed that Spanish agriculture has reached a point when farmers’ investments have become larger than profits (García, 2007).
This has had a particular effect on the small and medium-sized producers (UPA, 2007). Spanish consumers wait to buy fresh strawberries until they are the cheapest at the peak of the season. At other times, they are substituting fresh strawberries for diary desserts (Revenga, 2007). If prices of fresh fruit were to be raised to pay for higher wages, employers claim, Spanish consumers would be even less willing to purchase fresh strawberries and growers will be pushed out of business. None of the discussions regarding wages have inquired how much would strawberry prices have to rise to lead to a change in consumer preferences.
Amelioration of working conditions has been the most successful of any alternatives discussed so far. Employer organizations and labor unions have been able to negotiate satisfactory collective labor agreements, but individual employers have not always complied. The ploughing, soil perforation and polyethylene application have been mechanized. 5 Furthermore, farmers have planted new varieties characterized by larger fruit, fewer leaves, improved ripening, temperature and disease resistance, more consistent harvest periods and longer shelf life. The substitution of leafy Chandler by more exposed Oso Grande improved fruit resistance to
5 Polyethylene sheets isolate fruit from the soil thus making it more disease, dirt and frost resistant as well as more visible.
18 diseases, facilitated ripening and harvesting. The introduction of Camarosa has helped to flatten harvesting peaks, thus allowing for better labor management and higher prices. Further improvements in strawberry productivity and flattening of ripening peaks are expected from recently developed Albión, Aguedilla and Coral varieties.
Mechanization of planting and harvesting has been difficult since no affordable machine has been able to substitute for human hands and eyes necessary to place delicate plants in the soil, distinguish ripe from the unripe fruit and pick it gently. Employers and labor unions agree that, if such machine were to be developed, it would most likely be only affordable if it is put to communal use since individual small and medium-sized farmers would not be able to afford it
(Freshuelva, 2007; CC. OO, 2007a).
A scintilla of hope in the quest for rationalization of production has appeared with the emerging research on hydroponic production. Hydroponic strawberries are planted in overhead baskets or horizontal troughs similar to rain gutters which make it possible to harvest them in an upright position. Since all nutrients are provided through a soil-less environment, there is no need for tillage, weeding and smaller need for pest control. Since plants are grown in greenhouses, lighting, temperature, humidity, and irrigation can be controlled and the harvest peaks could be spread over time as well as moved to winter months when the North European consumers are more likely to pay higher prices for the fruit. Although the set-up costs of hydroponic farming are high, growers can recoup them by producing a higher value product, increasing yield, spending less on pest control and overcoming the problem of labor shortages.
Governments have a choice between providing growers with a labor subsidy or with a financial subsidy. While a labor subsidy makes growers and workers increasingly more dependent on each other, a financial susbsidy encourages innovation and reduces dependence on less controllable factors such as labor supply and climatic conditions. More importantly, with the coming ban on methyl bromide and the expected reduction of soil-dependent strawberry agriculture by half, governments and farmers would be wise in investing in hydroponic
19 production and encourage consumers to choose less-labor intensive fruit. In 2007, the Andalucía government allotted €75 265 to research the possibilities of extension of hydroponic strawberry agriculture in the state, but there has not been any wide-scale efforts to encourage individual farmers to embrace it.
Since 2001, when de facto legalizations were abrogated and a number of measures against irregular migration and work were put in place, some farmers have reduced production of fresh strawberries (figure 1) and others moved to Morocco. Small and medium-sized employers who cannot offshore production have argued that moving abroad is administratively complicated and costly and it deprives workers of the opportunity to earn Spanish wages and work under
Spanish labor legislation, which are notably better than those in Morocco (COAG, 2007).
The tripartite discussion of labor shortages has been biased towards a labor subsidy policy because it has been less complex and less costly in the short-term than any of the financial subsidies. The key to choosing between the two broad subsidies available rests with the ability of the three actors involved to engage in a comprehensive debate on the long term economic, political and social consequences of two subsidies available.
20 Figure 1 Strawberry Planting in Spain
Source: USDA, 2007: 6
Recruitment
Employers whose employment offers have been approved can select workers individually or have an intermediary conduct the selection on their behalf. The Spanish Ministry of Labor encourages going through employer organizations, which most employers do because of the bureaucratic burden and higher cost of selecting workers directly. The four major organizations recruiting Huelva strawberry workers are Freshuelva, ASAJA, COAG, UPA-CORA.
The selection mechanism has evolved over time and differs from country to country. In
Poland, recruitment responsibilities have shifted from central ES (KUP) to regional ES (WUP) and since January 1 st , 2007 to a quasi-independent youth ES (OHP). As demand for work in Spain and the skills of workers declined, the Ministry of Labor decided that recruitment of workers did not require as scrutinous administrative involvement (MPiPS, 2008b). Along with the laxing of
Ministry of Labor involvement came confusion regarding strawberry harvesters’ recruitment in
2008. According to the Ministry of Labor, the process was to be handled by the youth ES communicating directly with the growers associations, a major departure from the past protocol
21 stipulating that work offers be passed from the Spanish Embassy to the Ministry of Labor and later to the competent selection ES.
Recruitment in Poland starts with the advertisement of work offers by the ES in charge, normally on the internet and in the ES offices’ bulletin boards. However, most candidates find out about recruitment by the word-of-mouth. The informality of recruitment advertisement comes as a relief to Polish authorities who live a conflict of interests between encouraging Poles to work in
Poland and abroad (OHP, 2008). The ES do not assume responsibility for the consequences of work in Spain, because of the lack of competence to investigate and sanction labor contentions occurring abroad. The candidates are advised to direct any problems to the local support services, such as labor unions, work inspections or Guardia Civil (OHP, 2008; MPiPS, 2008a).6
While facilitating pre-selection, Polish ES verify if candidates have been unemployed and meet the basic admissibility criteria defined by the Spanish employers – “…are women between
18 and 48 years old, willing to take up physically demanding strawberry agriculture jobs, for around €36 a day, in the Spanish province of Huelva, sometime between February and June”.
The criteria applied in the selection of workers to Spanish agricultue are very liberal but the work is hard. In an attempt to avoid disappointment after arrival in Spain, Polish ES coordinators have been opposed to further erosion of criteria by the selecting committees. As a general trend, year by year the candidates seeking employment in Spanish agriculture have been older and less- skilled (OHP, 2008).
To convey the obscure selection criteria applied, candidates have referred to the interview as “casting”. The casting takes place in the ES offices in charge and consists of a job overview, the filling out of a biographical questionnaire (20 minutes) and an interview (5 minutes). The first part is conducted by Polish ES staff. The second is implemented by Spanish employer representatives with the help of translators.
http://www.wup.gdansk.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2909&Itemid=279
22 The number of questions asked during the interview varies with the number of candidates and the venue. In the non-EU member states, the committee inquires about the candidate’s willingness to return home upon contract’s expiry, but in Poland the only question asked often refers to the previous agricultural work experience. Ideally workers should be from agricultural areas in Eastern Poland, but most have been recruited in the industrial South-West. Some suspect that the divergence from the original criteria has had to do with the Spanish employers drive to cut transportation costs down. Others point to the Polish authorities hoping to reduce the unemployment in this area. Regardless of who is responsible, the profile of workers does not facilitate know-how transfer since, contrary to what the candidates must claim to pass the interview, few have worked in or are willing to take agricultural work in future.
What remains essential for the selection committee is the worker’s determination to work hard. Workers who have gone through the interviews before advise the new candidates on what to do to qualify. Internet forums devoted to tip exchanges have been muschrooming and are a good source of information to find out about the nature of selection and work in Spanish strawberry agriculture. In a number of such forums, those interviewed have pointed to employers seemingly searching for candidates whose socioeconomic profile would make them hardworking and flexible. The selection in Poland does not involve a professional medical examination. Instead the committee asks for a physician’s certification or evaluates workers’ fitness according to its own criteria. Each year there are cases of workers whom employers judged fit (because the candidates were not obese, had short fingernails and did not wear jewelry) but who suffered work injuries because the lack of professional health examination led them overestimate their ability to cope with numerous dangers associated with work in intensive agriculture (OHP, 2008). According to those who assist workers abroad, psychological fitness is as important as physical fitness and the selection should include a psychologist due to extended periods of separation from family, work and housing isolation, conflicts with employers and with fellow workers (Jaworski, 2007).
23 At the end of the interview, the candidates are informed whether they have been admitted, rejected or have been placed on the reserve list. Those admitted sign a pre-contract, which bears the name of employer organization, but not that of an individual employer. Workers often do not find who they will work for until they arrive in Huelva. The workers who have been issued pre- contracts are asked to stay alert for a phone call to board the busses when the fruit is judged to be ripe enough, sometime between late January and early March. When the fruit is ready, the transportation is arranged. Usually Spanish employers want the workers to report to the departing point within 72 to 48 hours, because the bus trip takes another 48 hours and the fruit cannot wait that long.
Poles who have been selected to work in Huelva would have preferred to have been explained the selection criteria in greater detail, given a proper contract and allotted more time to prepare for the departure. The most blunt have complained about the flexibility required from them already during the selection process. The flexibility required from workers does not come without a price. While most wait anxiously for the telephone call, others reconsider the pros and cons of going to Huelva and resign (OHP, 2008).
The most common factors favoring departure stem from “I have nothing to lose” attitude.
Those who leave for Spain mention: (1) limited job opportunities in Poland and elsewhere in
Europe between February and May; (2) acute financial need, especially in families where both breadwinners are unemployed; (3) easier selection criteria and better working conditions than those offered by German agriculture (OHP, 2008); (4) accumulation of social capital to move to other sectors in Spain or to save up the capital necessary for summer employment elsewhere in
Europe; (5) the opportunity to spend some time in an “exotic” country and culture.
Those who change their mind mention: (1) relatively small earnings compared with the very hard nature of work; (2) smaller savings than expected (insufficient hours/high living costs)
(3) separation from family (4) fears of not being able to integrate in a new, competitive environment, particularly among fellow Polish returnees; (5) fears that employers will have them
24 pay back the social security which most did not pay before 2005. According to one Polish migrant:
“The work in strawberry agriculture is hard. But even though the working and living conditions are inferior than those set in program rules you do not risk time and money to look for housing and a job. Even though the employer tries to make the most of you, you will not end up as a bar girl. If I knew English and had contacts in Ireland I’d there, but without English, contacts, and a job in Poland, I am fine in Spain, at least for the time being ” (Migrant 1, 2007).
When the originally selected candidates drop out, reserve workers are called in.
However, sometimes the overall number of drop-outs exceeds the number of reserves. In this case, employer organizations try to intensify selection efforts in other countries or repeat the selection in the same country.
Transportation
Recruitment in the country of origin requires employers to pay half of the international transportation and all of the transportation between home and work in Spain. Employers discount the equivalent of return transportation from workers’ salaries. However, they cannot do it, if they dismiss migrants before the end of the 15 day trial period. To save on the transportation between home and work, employers have tended to house workers in the fields.
The type of international transportation depends on the country of origin; all Europeans are brought in by bus, Moroccans by a combination of bus and a ferry and Senegalese and Latin
Americans by plane. Contrary to employers’ claims that transportation costs make foreign workers more costly, the Spanish government subsidizes these costs by negotiating with the countries of origin and the carriers on employers’ behalf (MTAS, 2007). According to the
Ministry of Labor, cultural aspects have played a more important role in employers’ hesitation
25 about recruitment of healthcare workers in the Philippines than the transportation costs (MTAS,
2007).
Transportation from Poland is arranged through private bus operators. Polish migrants think that, while looking for the cheapest and most flexible transportation, employers turn a blind eye to their comfort and safety. They would prefer the Ministry of Labor to be more involved in negotiation of better transportation arrangements, particularly as the € 280 two way bus transportation cost is comparable with the commercial airfare
Once in Huelva, workers are met by the representatives of employer organizations, employers, and frequently by NGOs, labor unions and Guardia Civil. The NGOs, labor unions and Guardia Civil inform migrants of the resources and rights granted to them. They cannot give any training since migrants are exhausted after long journeys, but they use the opportunity to establish contact with the newly arrived since, from that point on, workers will be dispersed across the province and will be hard to reach.
While the NGOs, labor unions and Guardia Civil distribute pamphlets and snacks, employer organizations match newly arrived workers with employers. It is now that anonymously selected workers find out who their employers will be and where they will work. Families and friends can request to be placed with the same employer, and almost always are, but it cannot be guaranteed
Housing and social integration
Under the tripartite Huelva agreement, employers are required to provide migrants with free housing. But, this provision is exceptional to Huelva. In other provinces, employers pay ninety to eighty percent of housing and discount the remaining ten to twenty percent from workers’ salaries. In practice, even in Huelva, individual unscrupulous employers have attempted to discount housing costs from workers salaries (Gordo, 2002: 11).
Even though employer organizations make an active effort to avoid housing problems, they have felt that their primary responsibility should be to give work and not rooms. In his
26 statement to Europa Press, the President of Freshuelva, José Manuel Romero, affirmed “I am not a hostel manager, I am a strawberry grower” (in Gordo, 2002a: 12).
There is no a priori housing verification. Controls are carried out after migrants have moved in, when there is suspicion that standards are inadequate. However, the “up-to-date health standards established by the Ministry of Public Works” are regarded vague. For instance, minimum living space per person has not been established (UGT, 2007a).
Some employers house their workers in former garages and barns, others provide flats in towns. Between the two extremes most migrants live in four to eight person trailers in the fields., because this poses no transportation costs and decreases the potential of social conflict (during the peak of the season there are almost as many migrants in the small agricultural communities as native residents). Migrants have access to shared kitchen and bathroom facilities. The trailers have hot and cold water but no heating or air conditioning; even though night temperatures between mid-November and mid March oscillate between 0 and 10 Celsius and day temperatures between mid-April and the end of the harvest season exceed 30 Celsius. Even though migrants should only pay for gas, some employers charge them for electricity, if they brought their own heaters and fans. Employers argue that these appliances are not a part of standard furniture, therefore they should not subject to the free electricity clause (Migrant 1, 2007; Migrant 2, 2007).
In order to help employers provide decent housing, the municipality of Cartaya has converted the former forest ranger station into seasonal worker housing - Casa del Gato . It is a showcase model of Huelva’s housing, but even here the conditions have declined as the occupancy has risen from the original 100 beds in a brick building to 300 in wooden shacks to
800 in trailers (image 1, 2). In order to secure a place in Casa del Gato, employers must pay an annual program participation fee and €2.00 per worker per night. Part of this fund is destined to support integration workshops conducted by NGOs and labor unions. However, the major obstacle to migrants’ integration is not the lack of workshops, but isolation from the Spanish
27 society. Housed in the fields or in the woods, migrants’ contact with the local community is limited to the weekly grocery store trips provided by employers.
Image 1 Brick and wooden housing units in Casa del Gato
©Piotr Plewa, 2007
28 Image 2 Trailer housing units in Casa del Gato
© Piotr Plewa, 2007
29 According to Manuel García, Casa del Gato’s manager, there are a number of challenges associated with keeping the diverse migrant worker community in order; “Poles sneak in alcohol,
Moroccans do not clean…” and “if you try to charge them to restore order, they protest, particularly returnees…”. The challenges posed by diversity in the living environment are also present at work and just like housing managers find it easier to keep “pork-eating Poles” and
“pork-abstaining Moroccans” apart, also employers find it easier to work with homogenous teams.
Apart from occasional tensions between employers and workers, there are occasional tensions between workers themselves. This has a negative effect on productivity and requires extra assistance where migrants work and live. Some Polish migrants report a reluctance to return to the same finca or even to Huelva’s strawberry agriculture due to the saturation of the community and sector with fellow Poles. 7 There have been at least three lines of conflict cutting across Huelva’s foreign worker population: (1) intercultural; (2) intracultural; (3) status-related.
The intercultural conflict arose in 2002 when growers started to substitute for the original, predominantly Maghrebi workers with new, predominantly Eastern European workers. The state authorities themselves contributed to the conflict by encouraging employers to select workers from the countries with which Spain has signed bilateral labor agreements. The fact that many of the new Eastern European workers, particularly Poles, have since then settled, married and taken managerial positions in Huelva’s strawberry farms has kept the conflict going.
The intracultural conflict arose as some of the workers of the same nationality managed to move to higher positions while others could not. The seniority and popularity of Polish women placed some of them in managerial positions, but not all have married and the positions of those who have not, have been conditioned by the ability to continue to enforce the rules. Polish workers who have not made it to these positions report having been able to get along much better
7 The question of inter-migrant conflicts is the prevailing theme on this forum: http://www.hiszpanski.ang.pl/praca_huelva_truskawki_1880.html
30 with other nationals than with senior Poles (Migrant 1, 2007; Migrant 2, 2007; Jaworski, 2007).i
During the heyday of Polish migration to Huelva, local women organized strikes against gender- profiled selection and the resulting intermarriages with local men (Jaworski, 2007).
As some of the older workers were able to legalize their status through the 2005 regularization process, they have become more preoccupied by employers’ constantly searching for new sources of labor while they themselves have found it difficult to stay on the job and to secure the hours that they need to sustain themselves in Spain. Consequently, some have been
“leaking out” to construction and services, where fewer foreign workers meant more hours and better working conditions. This has produced a paradoxical situation in which the loss of legal status led to the improvement of working conditions.
Work
Spain is the most important producer of strawberries in the European Union, and the second largest in the world after the United States. An estimated eighty-five to ninety percent of
Spain’s strawberry production is for fresh consumption and frozen strawberries are difficult to find in grocery stores. There are apparently two main reasons why fresh production is predominant: the length of the strawberry season and the cost of labor. Fresh strawberries at reasonably low prices are available for six months a year and Spanish consumers could choose from a large supply of other fresh fruits in the strawberry off-season. The cost of labor necessary to separate strawberry stems from the fruit are much lower in other countries, particularly
Morocco (USDA, 2007).
The work cycle in Huelva’s strawberry agriculture could be divided into five phases
(table 7). While the beginning and the end of the strawberry cycle has been relatively stable
(second half of October and first half of June), the four harvest phases have shifted according to weather and market conditions as well as the varieties of strawberries used. This has had important implications for labor management.
31
Table 7 Strawberry cycle in Huelva’s agriculture
Approximate Period Approximate Labor Force number of workdays
Planting 4-6 Spanish Legalized foreign October-December Returning foreign
Early Harvest 2-4 Spanish Legalized foreign January -Mid February Returning foreign Itinerant irregular foreign
Pre Peak Harvest 4-6 Spanish Legalized foreign Mid-February - Mid-March Returning foreign Newly recruited foreign Itinerant irregular foreign
Peak Harvest 6-7 Spanish Mid-March - Mid-May Legalized foreign Returning foreign Newly recruited foreign Itinerant irregular foreign Newly arrived irregular foreign
Post Peak Harvest 5-2 Spanish Mid-May - Mid-June Legalized foreign Returning foreign Newly recruited foreign Itinerant irregular foreign Newly arrived irregular foreign
Planting
Returnees on nominative contracts and those legal foreigners who have been registered with Spanish Employment Services as unemployed, do not have to go through the selection process and can arrive as early as employers have jobs for them and stay until the end of the season, i.e. for up to nine months. Some arrive in November to work in the strawberry planting and various preparatory work such as plastic laying and greenhouse building. The preparatory
32 jobs have been partially mechanized and are relatively attractive to unemployed Spanish workers; therefore the proportion of Spanish to foreign workers during the planting period is almost equal
(Migrant 3, 2007). Officially, planters are paid €1.5 a day more than harvesters (€36.73 instead of
€35.23). The higher wage combined with longer contract duration presents an incentive to work hard in hope of receiving a planting contract for the following year.
To prevent that planting workers take illegal employment during the low season, between the end of planting and the beginning of pre-peak harvest, most foreigners are allowed to work in other crops managed through the same employer organization, principally orange harvesting.
While employers would like to be able to be able to move workers according to changing labor demand, labor unions prefer foreign workers to stay in the original crops and be paid under-time rates or not brought at all since the under-time is hardly ever paid (UGT, 2007a). Since all of the planting foreign workers are repetitors, hardly any abandon their employers after the end of the planting season. Yet, some migrants have reported that employers delayed their last pay for the planting season until their return for the early harvest (Migrant 1, 2007; Migrant 2, 2007).
Early Harvest
Most of the early harvest workers are those who worked in planting. There are no newly recruited workers because their selection coincides with the early harvest and employer organizations prevent their arrivals in this early season to avoid that there are too many workers for too few workdays. However, as the olive picking season in Jaen approaches the end in late
January, the itinerant Spanish as well as foreign legal and irregular workers start to trickle in.
Even though the number of irregular itinerant migrants in 2007 decreased substantially as compared with the early years of contratación en origen, and the 1990s, the shortage of housing
33 continues to be as acute as in the past and the communities which receive most itinerant workers tend to develop asentamientos 8.
Most itinerant foreign workers are veterans who worked in Huelva in the past and have not yet found fixed employment anywhere in Spain. They know where to go to find old asentamientos . If asentamientos were cleared during the off-season, the first itinerant workers who arrive in Huelva construct new ones, always in the forested areas and within walking distance of plantations and sources of fresh water. Asentamientos are constructed using any material that can be found in the fields, dragged from junkyards or that is donated by local farmers, NGOs, Guardia Civil and municipal governments. While none of these organizations endorses sub-standard living conditions in which itinerant migrants will live during the entire season, the combination of housing shortage, administrative difficulty of repatriations, the need to control irregular migration and a sense of empathy contributes to benign neglect. For instance, from the Guardia Civil standpoint, it is better to tolerate sporadic irregular work of migrants who would have otherwise been forced into crime than to forego the social contact necessary to detect potential diseases, drug and human trafficking, exploitation and terrorism (Guardia Civil, 2007).
Under the pretext of bringing food and warm clothes, Guardia Civil EDATI teams visit asentamientos frequently . Apart from discrete controls, the Guardia Civil EDATI teams facilitate contact between migrants and NGOs, labor unions, health services, embassies, work inspection services and police.
The proportions of nationalities in the asentamientos have evolved over time, in parallel to irregular migration. Since 2004, Sub-Saharans (mostly Senegalese, Malians, and Gambians) constituted around sixty percent of asentamientos population and Gypsies, Moroccans and
Romanians the rest (Guardia Civil, 2007). Most of asentamiento occupants have been undocumented, but some, particularly Portuguese and Romanian Gypsies and Romanians have
8 According to Guardia Civil’s EDATI team, as late as in 2003 some asentamientos consisted of up to 400 people. In 2007 the medium size of asentamientos was around 40-50. Guardia Civil uses the counts of
34 been legal. The illegal status of asentamiento residents does not suffice to break asentamiento down. For the asentamiento to be razed the owner of the land, be it an individual person or municipal government, must file a complaint. But as long as asentamiento occupants keep to themselves hardly anybody is interested in demolishing it since this will only force migrants to move to another place and increase the chances that the lack of income and hunger will push them to crime.
Even though strawberry prices on European market have acted as a powerful incentive for growers to invest in early varieties of strawberries, growers are often not able to provide their workers with the collectively agreed minimum of eighteen days of full employment a month
(UGT, 2007a). The combination of too few hours with the harder nature of work in harvesting, as opposed to planting, causes some of the Spanish workers who had worked in strawberry planting in the fall not to return for the harvest in January. This early form of “leakage” is particularly bothersome for farmers since it coincides with the highest market prices of strawberries. In order to be able to replenish those workers with new foreign workers, growers have been calling to move the approval of work offers and the selection of workers in the countries of origin to earlier in the year and to make their deployment more flexible. In the meantime, the least scrupulous employers have retained planting workers’ December wages until January to ensure that they return after Christmas (Migrant 1, 2007; Migrant 2, 2007).
In January, when the first new strawberries are harvested they cost a domestic consumer between €10 and €15 a kilo. Spanish consumers expect that by the peak of the season in mid-
March the prices will decrease to €3 and €5 and do not purchase them in large quantities until then. The January-March production of strawberries is almost exclusively destined for export, mostly to France and Germany (table 8).
people in asentamientos as one method of estimating the size of irregular migration in the province.
35 Table 8 Exports of fresh strawberries from Spain (Metric tons)
Country 2006 2007
France 74 120 72 000 Germany 52 879 50 000 Italy 21 505 20 000 UK 18 909 15 000 Belgium 8 333 9 000 Portugal 7 664 6 000 Netherlands 6 638 4 000 Austria 4 509 2 000 Others 30 443 7 000
Total 225 000 185 000 Source: USDA, 2007: 11
Pre-Peak
By mid-February most of the newly selected migrant workers have arrived in Huelva.
Over the first two weeks they are subject to a trial period during which they have to demonstrate that they are able to meet the harvesting norm. If they do not pass the trial period they will be sent home. Harvesters are trained by team masters or returnees, often of the same nationality as the apprentices, to facilitate learning and reduce training costs. Except for the AENEAS-Cartaya program, where labor unions have been intensively involved in training to prevent labor incidents and to teach workers some transferable skills, the training is limited to a one time demonstration on how to pick and presort fruit.
The labor force at the pre-peak phase consists of Spanish citizens, new EU citizens and third country nationals. Spanish citizens tend to work in managerial or less labor-intensive positions, to which foreign workers can access too, provided that they have gained experience and employers’ trust (Migrant 1, 2007). For instance, some team masters are third or fourth year migrant returnees.
36 According to collective labor agreements, workers should work 6.5 hours a day with a 30 minute lunch break (15 minutes paid by the employer and 15 minutes by the worker), 6 days a week up to the total of 39 hours a week. One in seven days should be free. Outside of the peak season, the work-day tends to start at 8 a.m. and during the peak season at 7 a.m. The overtime hours are not obligatory and should be paid according to the overtime rate. The extra hours should be preceded by a break and fall between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.. If the employer has greenhouses, (s)he would normally assign greenhouse work in the morning, when the temperature is the lowest, and open fields work in the afternoons. In practice, work organization depends on individual employers.
The specific methods of harvesting differ between employers. Since most engage in fresh strawberry production, strawberries are picked with stems but without tails. Strawberries which have been picked without stems should be placed in the “secondary” quality boxes. In order to prevent that workers mix fruit (unconsciously or to paralyze production), some employers have experimented with various methods of harvest control. Strawberries are picked in an standing position, without leaning elbows against the thights. This position, even though painful, is considered to be more effective and less accident-prone than squatting because the worker must be able to keep moving the cart. Since most new workers have never worked in intensive strawberry agriculture before, they are unaware of the rationale for team masters requiring them to work in this particular position which leads to minor frictions at the beginning of harvest.
Generally each worker has a cart with eight boxes. Once all the boxes are full, the worker reports to the team master. The team master weighs and tallies the boxes to ensure that the daily norm is met. Normally, during the six and a half hour workday, the worker is expected to harvest 80 2.5 kg boxes. All fully ripe strawberries must be picked. Partially unripe are left to be picked later (Freshuelva, 2007). According to migrants, the norms set up in collective labor agreements are perfectly doable, as long as employers and team masters play by the rules: supply workers with adequate equipment and do not force them to work in adverse conditions. Polish
37 orange pickers in Nerva have reported being assigned to pick orange trees planted on steep hill slopes (Migrant, 4, 2007). The strawberry harvest becomes as difficult as picking oranges in the hills when the fruit must be picked from the greenhouses on steamy days or from muddy fields after extended periods of rain.
The fluctuating number of hours in the pre-peak season surprises newly arrived workers who had expected to work six days a week for 6.5 hours. Most do not know that they have the right to compensation for incomplete days of work. According to Article 11 of the collective agreements, employers must pay fifty percent of full day wages to a worker who has reported to work but was not authorized to work or was asked to stop working within the first two hours.
According to the same article, employers must pay one hundred percent of daily wages to a worker who has been asked to stop working after having worked for more than two hours (UGT,
2007). Employers are more likely to pay some overtime rather than compensate for the hours not worked (Migrant 3, 2007). Workers complain that, if employers admitted fewer workers, then everybody would be able to work six days a week for 6.5 hours, as expected.
Even though the situation has been improving, there are still employers who do not guarantee working conditions, according to collective agreements. While few pay stipulated overtime (Migrant 1, 2007; Guardia Civil, 2007; UGT, 2007), some even do not pay the full collectively bargained hour rate (Migrant 1, 2007). Workers are supposed to be paid through direct deposit every week, but some employers choose to pay every two weeks or every month
(particularly at the end of campaign to prevent leakage). Part of the problem stems from the lack of clarity regarding employers’ and migrants’ rights and responsibilities. Collective labor agreements are not translated into migrants’ native languages, migrants’ knowledge of Spanish is limited and there are a number of unwritten crop- or employer-specific practices (e.g. the wait- period for the fruit to dry following rain; a lowered norm at the beginning of the season to facilitate workers’ adjustment to the pace of work and its gradual increase as the season
38 progresses; the breaking of the first pay into two installments to give workers a cash-advance at the beginning of the season) (OHP, 2008).
Many Polish workers are aware of the discrepancies between contracts and reality, but their ability to change reality is limited. In theory, they can address problems directly with employer or employer organization, labor unions, Guardia Civil, Cruz Roja or Huelva Acoge. In practice, raising the issue with an employer presents a risk of being asked to take unpaid days off or not receiving a nominative contract for the next year (Migrant 1, 2007; Migrant 2, 2007).
Workers who live in the fields have restricted mobility and even when they get to meet with their allies, the language barrier limits their ability to describe the more complex problems and then defend them in a bureaucratic and lengthy investigation in Spain. The team masters fear that having taken side of the victim, they risk degrading or dismissal. Polish migrants have consistently complained about the lack of support from Polish team masters (Migrant 1, 2007;
Jaworski, 2007).
Religious leaders provide unofficial and limited support. Father Jaworski and his predecessors have been supporting Polish migrant workers in Moguer and Palos de la Frontera.
However, in his and migrants’ opinion, it is the sending country’s diplomatic missions that should be more involved in preventing and reacting to labor-related infringements, for example by placing a labor attaché in the region for the duration of a strawberry campaign (Jaworski, 2007).
Peak
The peak of the strawberry season falls roughly between mid-March and mid - May.
During this period farmers need workers to be available over 6.5 hours a day and during Sunday and holidays because the fruit ripens fast. However, given that overtime and holiday employment is costly (table 9 and 10) growers attempt to increase the pool of labor to do as much harvesting as possible within a 6.5 hour day and on workdays. This is why at the peak phase, apart from
Spanish, returning and newly selected workers, some employers may risk contracting irregular
39 itinerant workers from asentamientos . It seems that when growers claim that without extra labor their crops would go to waste, they actually say that, if they had to pay the overtime, their crops would go to waste. Growers claim that estimating labor demand constitutes a very difficult task and therefore requires a flexible pool of labor to be brought in and out of the fields according to the ripening cycle. But they do not explain that it is so difficult because neither do they want to pay compensation for incomplete workdays nor overtime.
Table 9 2007 and 2008 hourly salaries in Huelva’s strawberry agriculture compared (6.5 hr a day / 39 hrs a week)
2007 2008
Planter € 5.65 € 5.77 Harvester € 5.42 € 5.53
Source: UGT, 2007c and 2008
Table 10 2008 overtime salary table in Huelva’s strawberry agriculture
Weekday Holiday
1st hour € 9.69 75% € 11.08 100% 2nd and further hours € 12.47 125% € 12.47 125%
Source: UGT, 2008
Employers take a whole range of approaches to the overtime requirement: from asking for volunteers to applying peer pressure on loyal returnees and team masters; from paying the full overtime to paying the normal rate. Most tend to switch to piece-rate (OHP, 2008), pay €1.00 above the regular rate or the lowest of the stipulated wage brackets (75%, i.e. €9.49) (Migrant 3,
2007). Employers know that the competition among first-time workers for the nominative contracts to return to planting is fierce and that migrants from the most impoverished backgrounds would rather work more regularly paid hours than not work at all. Furthermore, since the peak season offers the only opportunity for the new workers to demonstrate that they
40 qualify to be issued nominative contract for next year, some heighten the norm (Migrant 1, 2007;
Migrant 2, 2007). The flexibility and sacrifice of the newcomers bothers some returnees, Spanish workers and the legalized foreign workers, and it is often they who report wage abuses and heightened expectations to labor unions or Guardia Civil (UGT, 2007a).
Forcing the extra hours from legally contracted workers presents a smaller risk than contracting illegally due to the weaker probability of detection and the weaker sanctions for underpayment than for illegal contracting. Illegal employment has much greater visibility than underpayment. Once irregular workers find an employer willing to contract with them, their fellows tend to congregate in the vicinity and their presence indicates that irregular contracting may be occurring in the area. By contrast, underpaid wages are harder to detect, particularly, when workers are unaware, unable or unwilling to report the abuse.
It is estimated that the largest flows of irregular migrants to Spain arrive through Madrid
Airport. Most arriving this way are Latin Americans who enter on tourist visas which they subsequently overstay. Given that most incorporate themselves in the services and construction work in Madrid and Barcelona, they are rather insignificant as far as participation in Huelva’s strawberry agriculture is concerned. In the early 2000s, when Eastern European were not yet citizens of the EU and when their participation in Huelva’s strawberry agriculture was on the rise, most of Huelva’s irregular migrants came via French-Spanish border. By 2007, the most important flow of Huelva’s irregular workforce has been occurring through the maritime route, from Morocco to the Spanish mainland and from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Canary Islands.
Despite the high and rising costs of smuggling, there is no evidence that employment of irregular workforce in Huelva’s agriculture has been linked to human trafficking. However, according to the most recent investigations, in order to offset the costs of the journey, migrants smuggled through Morocco may be agreeing to transport drugs in exchange for discounted smuggling services (Guardia Civil, 2007). When irregular entry is linked to drug trade, migrants are detained and sanctioned immediately. But when it is not, migrants are first placed in reception
41 centers subject to health, age, nationality, and asylum status verification. Some of these operations are conducted in Madrid, so irregular migrants are transported to Madrid, let on their own and ordered to report back every two weeks, as their case is being investigated. Even when their cases are decided, they are given a 40 day return order, but since there are insufficient means to house or repatriate them, they are trusted to leave voluntarily (Guardia Civil, 2007; Huelva
Acoge, 2007). Most disappear into the illegal economy, including in Huelva’s strawberry agriculture.
The incorporation of the new irregular migrants in Huelva’s irregular labor pool tends to occur through contacts with co-nationals. The typical spots where the new migrants find out about the location of asentamientos are in strawberry towns’ main plazas or locutorios –calling booths where competitive international dialing rates are offered. It is from these locutorios that migrants, who have successfully made it to Huelva, call home to announce their arrival in Spain.
The stories are painted in rosy colors to relieve family members and those who had lent them money. Migrants, who live in asentamentos , with no sustainable income, running water electricity and documents, tend to tell their families and friends back at home that they have work, a place to live and local friends. This reinforces the cycle of migration to Spain despite the poor prospects awaiting (Huelva Acoge, 2007).
Opportunities for irregular work in Huelva have decreased sharply since the early 2000s, except for weekends, holidays and the peak of the season. Administrative employer sanctions range from € 6.000 to € 60.000 and the news of one employer being sanctioned quickly spreads around the area. Employer organizations conducting selection in the country of origins stigmatize irregular contracting. Yet when the fruit is ripe and Spanish or legalized workers refuse to work on Sundays and during Holy Week, some farmers risk employing illegally (Guardia Civil, 2007;
Huelva Acoge, 2007).
By Holy Week, when the most illegal contracting is estimated to occur, asentamientos are at their fullest. They are composed of itinerant migrants who had arrived from Jaen’s olive
42 harvest and those who have just arrived in Spain and have had little labor experience, if any. The contracting is not difficult given that the migrants from nearby asentamientos make themselves available at the farmers’ threshold.
Some irregular migrants employed in strawberry agriculture use falsified or false documents. A particularly common practice is for irregular workers to lend the documents to each other (Guardia Civil, 2007; Migrant 1, 2007; Migrant 2, 2007). There are no specific measures to ensure that employers distinguish genuine from false/borrowed documents. According to the
Guardia Civil, employers turn a blind eye to the documents that are visibly faked or not corresponding to the person using them (Guardia Civil, 2007, Migrant 1, 2007; Migrant 2, 2007).
But Guardia Civil EDATI teams making frequent visits in asentamientos and working closely with their occupants have a good idea of who works without documents (Guardia Civil, 2007). 9
Aware of workers’ irregular status, the most audacious employers may delay or refuse to pay migrants their last wages assuming that they will fear repatriation if they report abuse. Yet
Spanish work inspectors focus on penalizing employers and tend to view irregular workers as victims. When migrants have cooperated with state agents in detecting irregular employment, the law will fine the employer and help these migrants obtain temporary work and residence permits.
Furthermore, if they meet criteria, they would be able to legalize their status through an earned regularization based on labor or social integration. To qualify, irregular migrants need to prove that they have been in Spain for the past three years and have not left for more than 90 (labor market integration – driven legalization) and 120 (social integration-driven legalization) days.
The major obstacle to such legalizations, according to Guardia Civil and migrant lawyers is the acquisition of a 12 month work contract (Guardia Civil, 2007).
9 An EDATI officer introduced me to a Malian worker who, the officer knew, had lent his documents to another Malian migrant for the purpose of employment.
43 Post-Peak
After mid-May, Northern European countries are able to produce their own fresh strawberries. As the gap between returns from sales and investment in production narrows down,
Spanish employers wrap production up leaving any unpicked fruit in the fields.
As the number of workdays becomes smaller, workers attempt to depart, to avoid that the costs of stay exceed rapidly declining incomes. Depending on the ripening cycle, the first to leave are the itinerant irregular migrants moving to the tomato harvest in Murcia, or summer fruit and vegetable harvest in Almeria, and Lérida or the Spanish and legalized foreign workers. The workers contracted in their countries of origin are the least mobile because, if they leave before their employers judge it necessary and arrange busses, they lose their transportation deposit. To prevent early departures, some employers hold to the last wage(s) until workers board the busses.
They justify this illegal practice citing the duty to ensure workers return.
Returning workers must register their return home with the Spanish consulate within one month, but they cannot be repatriated by force. Some of the workers who come from the most unemployment-stricken regions and are not married, try to use their stay in Spain to explore the possibilities of long-term employment, in other crops, in domestic services and in tourism. Most farmers associated in growers associations prefer not to risk illegal employment, not only because of employer sanctions, but because of the risk of being excluded from the program in the following years. 10 Thus, the workers who are most determined to use contratación en origen as a stepping stone to long term illegal employment in Spain are forced to seek intermediaries.
According to Guardia Civil, up until Romania’s and Bulgaria’s accession to the EU, the nationals of these two countries have been the most active in illegal job matching (Guardia Civil, 2007).
There are suspicions that new nationalities have started to take over these services.
10 Employers who are not members of professional associations or who represent other sectors have less to lose. According to one Polish migrant, two of her fellow friends remained in Huelva at the end of the 2006 strawberry harvest to work in domestic services. One was offered € 600 a month with room and board
44
HUELVA MODEL: A MODEL FOR EMULATIO ?
Since May 2007, admissions of foreign workers to Huelva’s strawberry agriculture have ushered in a new phase. On the one hand, the two eastward enlargements of the European Union have limited the possibilities of recruitment in Poland and Romania. On the other hand, the
European Commission’s initiatives on circular migration and mobility partnerships have paved the way for new recruitment opportunities in North and Sub-Saharan Africa. This concatenation of events has been particularly favorable for Huelva farmers grouped under AENEAS-Cartaya program, who, since 2005, have attempted to consolidate recruitment in Africa emulating the postwar French seasonal agricultural worker admissions, and aiming to rotate every single seasonal worker admitted (Ayto. De Cartaya, 2007). In order to achieve this goal, only married women with family back at home have been admitted. While profiling of workers has raised controversies, it has helped to raise rotation rate from ten percent in 2005 to ninety percent in
2007 (Ayuntamiento de Cartaya, 2007), thus gaining the interest of European Commission’s proponents of circular migration.
Confident in the success of implementing a truly circular migration program, the mayor of Cartaya has launched a comprehensive lobbying campaign to lock in the ambitious version of the Huelva seasonal worker model as a blueprint for European migration and development policy in Africa. After having successfully agitated for a Spanish bilateral labor agreement with Senegal which in 2008 will dot Huelva strawberry growers with 700 out of 4000 admitted workers, the
AENEAS-Cartaya leader has drafted the plan for the creation of a Spanish labor center in
Senegal. The initiative dovetailed with the European Commission’s initiative to open a network of such centers in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the provisional plans, the Spanish center would continuously select and train a pool of workers that could be deployed to work in Spanish
included another €700 without room and board. She acknowledged that finding such work offers is quite difficult.
45 agriculture and fishing, services, transportation and construction on a short notice. The center would also train Senegalese workers for the jobs that the Spanish companies are expected to create in Senegal (Millán, 2007b). It is expected that, if Africans are permitted to come to Europe on planes, they will not have to come on smugglers’ boats (Millán, 2007a:2).
Even though some observers regard the Cartaya Circular Migration Model as a possible repetition of the failed Western European efforts to manage migration and development in Turkey and North Africa in the postwar period (UGT, 2007b), the current political, social and economic context has favored the initiative. The Cartaya Circular Migration Model may have a long road to go before being adopted by the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French governments. But with the European Commission and Cartaya authorities echoing each other’s ideas the project has raised the interest of the ILO. ILO officials have been invited to evaluate the project and support its emulation by other countries (Ayuntamiento de Cartaya, 2007; Millán 2007a).
While for the circular migration proponents, the policy could be successfully expanded and turned into a new migration management paradigm, employer organizations that have worked with Huelva seasonal admissions themselves point to the challenges posed by political instability, administrative complexity, social rejection and transportation costs if such program were to be taken beyond the province.
Political instability has challenged contratación en origen from its very inception. Even though Morocco was the first country with which Spain signed a bilateral labor agreement, cooperation with Morocco had to be put on a backburner until the difficulties of recruitment in
Eastern Europe pushed the Spanish employers against the wall and until the program found financial, logistical and political backing under AENEAS scheme. Today diplomatic relations with Morocco continue to be fragile with migration and agriculture being the key neuralgic points. The success of the agreement with Ukraine hinges on the crystallization of stable and transparent Ukrainian administration. Political factors are less of a problem in Latin America but there too the new political constellations have limited recruitment potential in Venezuela,
46 Nicaragua and Bolivia. Despite the Spanish government and EU efforts to promote cooperation in
Sub-Saharan Africa, negotiations in the region have been cautious. The opening of the British and
Irish labor markets eroded Polish and Romanian citizens’ and governments’ interest in cooperation with Spain.
Satisfactory administration of foreign worker admissions requires the goals of all of the actors involved to be aligned. That’s why the Spanish government has favored recruitment in the countries with which bilateral labor agreements have been signed. Employers organizations have feared that until the agreement with Ukraine is fully renegotiated, the ability of the Spanish government to intervene if things go wrong will be limited (COAG, 2007). Even though bilateral labor agreements provide a general framework for cooperation, they leave the key details of program administration to be negotiated after the first workers are admitted. While bilateral labor agreements tend to be signed rapidly and with fanfare, the negotiations of program details face a number of challenges, since other variables such as labor demand, labor supply, legislation, international relations, economic and political stability, and objectives of the actors involved etc. may change. Fears that authorities may not be able to guarantee selection transparency have kept recruitment in Bulgaria at bay and mitigated against negotiations with Moldova. Furthermore, employer organizations, labor unions, sending and receiving governments have found it difficult to agree on a profile of a migrant worker to be selected. Finally, even though employer organizations have been working hard to eliminate illegal practices, the long tradition of irregular employment has sometimes frustrated their efforts.
Rotation of workers has been difficult to enforce. According to AENEAS administrators, candidate profiling has helped to reduce leakage, but employers have feared that workers judged to be more likely to return are not always the most efficient at work. Neither are they the easiest to integrate. The rising proportion of illiterate elderly rural women has been particularly preoccupying. Whether workers will settle or not, employers fear that as the workers population become increasingly diverse from the Spanish society, they will be more difficult to integrate
47 (UPA, 2007). But, it has been difficult to predict the exact factors that could trigger social rejection. Romanians and Poles seem to pose no integration problems because of their respective religious and linguistic ties with Spanish society. Yet, soon Romanians women have become the scapegoats for crime and Poles for Spanish men’s infidelity. What warrants that Senegalese,
Ukrainians and Latin Americans will encounter easier paths to integration, particularly that as non-EU nationals, they may be more likely to leak into the bottom tiers of the Spanish labor and housing markets?
Spain’s geographical location does not favor cheap transportation. In theory the transportation costs could be offset if returning planes or busses bring unauthorized migrants, but repatriations are a taboo and while the countries of origin may agree to control the outflow of new migrants, they are very sensitive to the question of readmission of those who have left. The radius of foreign worker recruitment potential around Spain is not the same in all directions and has been generally increasing to the disadvantage of Spanish employers. Recruitment in the nearest countries may be more difficult due to indirect transportation or lack of other features guaranteeing that labor supply will meet employers’ expectations. Employers’ organizations agree that recruitment is not a chain without an end and will have to be aborted as soon as the costs exceed the benefits (Freshuelva, 2007; COAG, 2007). After all, the secret emergency plan for unsatisfied labor shortages has been to resort to costly but always available labor-saving alternatives (COAG, 2007).
The Huelva circular migration program increased return rates among those workers who could count on hassle-free readmission in the following year; decreased irregular contracting; and improved migrant workers living and working conditions. But the program also created the a perception of unsatisfied labor demand in Spain; contributed to the leakage into irregularity among those who could not count on the new labor contract in the following year or who found the program rules too restrictive; provoked diplomatic misunderstandings with the sending
48 countries; failed to prevent corruption in the recruitment process; and sparked the growth of smuggling infrastructure.
As employers gained greater control over the recruitment process, they were able to persuade Spanish officials to authorize “pilot programs” outside of formal bilateral agreements.
After protracted negotiations, Spanish authorities were able to formalize recruitment in Senegal, but not in Ukraine. Having realized the potential of the latter program to produce parallel irregular flows and bribery, the Spanish Ministry of Labor and growers agreed that cooperation with Ukraine, must be formalized to function properly in the future. In the spring of 2008, growers from Almonte (Huelva) were able to convince Spanish officials to admit 270 Filipino women based on yet another “pilot” program. It is too early to assess this program, but, as in the cases of Senegal and Ukraine, the Spanish government would like the program to be formalized through a more comprehensive agreement to avoid any unexpected outcomes.
The European Commission’s initiative on circular migration allowed farmers who could not or did not want to adopt alternatives to regain some control over migration flows. With official EU backing and a growing perception that circular migration would manage to avoid the pitfalls of the guestworker era, the growers’ representatives found it easier to convince Spanish officials to let them pursue foreign labor recruitment instead of costly, risky and time-consuming adjustment of production to the reality of tradeoff between expanded admissions and migration control.
As migrants had to be brought from increasingly more distant and economically deprived countries of origin and employers in other commodities became interested in foreign worker recruitment thereby making it possible for migrant labor to work in Huelva year-round, both migrants and employers lost interest in rotation. Instead of expanding seasonal and suppressing year-round work permits Huelva authorities would be better doing the opposite.
49 BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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50 INEM (2008), Interview with INEM Migration Department, INEM Madrid, April 10th, 2008.
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51
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52