A few days ago my heart broke when I heard a colleague in the union say: “Being a mother is getting harder and harder. I have to stretch my payroll to infinity to pay for fixed expenses – rent, electricity, telephones and extracurricular activities – and the 5 healthy lunches. … from school and 5 meals a day, with 5 pieces of fruit, seven days a week. Furthermore, we have to be brave enough to tell the children, month after month, that we will buy the shoes they need when we get paid and that the clothes they complain so much about have to last another month. Working like this doesn’t pay, but you have to put up with whatever it takes.”
We live in precarious times. Economic precariousness, because two salaries are often not enough to live on; social precariousness, because discredit and disenchantment with politics, justice, unions or the press are increasing; precariousness of solidarity, because our micro-problems are so many that, drop by drop, they drown us and we forget that at our side there is someone who needs us, who asks us for micro-help as great as a smile, an affectionate greeting or a coffee to talk and feel that we are not alone; and, of course, job insecurity.
In La Rioja there are companies that have not renewed their agreements for years and there are workers who continue with the same working conditions as a decade ago, with abusive hours and a toxic organization of the day. In the name of rotation, workers change jobs from one day to the next; In the name of productivity, you enter and exit an ERTE using WhatsApp; In the name of job improvements, you sign up for work on Mondays knowing that you will be dismissed on Friday; or indefinite contracts that must be completed with another job since indefinite work means for a few days or for a few hours; or due to the demands of so-called technological progress, we force our elders to pay at ATMs, those who have never connected to new technologies to do paperwork with the Administration online, and the youngest to live from instructions given in QR codes.
In 1886, in the city of Chicago, on May 1, workers began a strike asking for something that seemed impossible: eight hours to work, eight hours to sleep and eight hours at home. The streets were filled with blood and the working class responded. “Dry your tears, those who suffer! Have courage, slaves! Get up!”.
The 19th century claim is still valid in the 21st century. 1,744 hours per year, 38.5 hours per week, with schedules that respect rest time and allow us to reconcile work with basic personal needs – rest, healthy eating, leisure time, etc. – and family needs – accompanying our dependents, our children and our parents, dedicating them the quality time they deserve to cook for them, eat with them, play with them…–.
From a humanistic vision of work, we have to claim that a contract is a formal agreement that is signed with the employer and defended in court, and an implicit commitment in which each of the parties commits itself ethically. The worker, to comply with the demands of his job category. The employer, to scrupulously respect the law. The Administration, to promote responsible policies regarding job security, equal opportunities, economic remuneration, etc.; and also undertakes to ensure that the law is complied with, that is, to provide itself with a body of labor inspectors who will ensure that prevention plans are not a dead letter, that hours outside of working hours are not an acquired right of some employers or the worker’s responsibility adjusts to their job category; and guarantee that, after working life, we have constitutionally protected pensions that allow us to maintain real purchasing power, that no type of measure, whether cuts, tax increases, co-payments, or increases in the rates of basic services, deprive us of a dignified life.
Today, whatever day it is; here, whatever the company is; and now, in this historical moment that we have to live; It is time to ask, loud and clear, for a “yes to employment in capital letters”, which allows the worker and his family to live to work and frees him from the slavery of looking for several jobs in lower case to survive.
