Euro-WEA held a seminar entitled “Racism, Nazism, Fascism and Xenophobia” from 4-6 May in Madrid Spain. In this article, Almudena Fontecha Lopez from the UGT (General Workers’ Union, Spain) describes the experiences of immigrant workers in Spain.

Immigration in Spain, compared with other European countries, is relatively recent. Our first standard regarding immigration was passed in 1985. Since then statistics have been collected, and a progressive increase began in the immigrant population in Spain.

However, this increase – if we are talking specifically of non-EU workers with work and residence permits – is not always regular. In certain years, from 1985 until today, we have seen decreases in the number of permits in force. In our judgment, this is caused by inadequate immigration policies put into place by successive governments.

The principal reason for immigration into Spain, regular or irregular, is work. However, the policy followed until now has been limited to establishing entry requirements into Spain, without verifying whether workers gain legally established contracts of employment. This lack of linking, especially with entry into the labour market, has from time to time resulted in workers who have permits becoming illegal through the impossibility of proving the existence of stable employment while their permits are in force. For the UGT, having a work permit does not ensure the administrative or work stability of those workers.

On the other hand, Spanish legislation directs foreign workers into certain sectors of activity, regardless of any theoretical or practical training they may have acquired in their countries of origin. Employers claim that work in these sectors – mainly agriculture, construction and domestic service – is work that Spanish people are unwilling to do. This argument has been shown to be untrue, at least in the sense meant by some employers. The Internal Migration Agreement, signed by the trade unions and employers of the agricultural sector together with the Ministry of Work and Social Affairs, has shown that employers who argue the necessity of migrant labour are not talking about contracts of work not covered in the national market: what they want is available labour willing to work in conditions not covered by our laws.

This is the kind of practice that the immigration policies of recent governments have led to, and which UGT argues must change. If we are talking of immigrant labour, let us do it properly, with regulation of labour flows by the intervention of social, trade union and employer agencies; verifying that anyone who makes an offer of work draws up a real contract which fulfils conditions established by collective agreements; the possibility that workers in an irregular situation can gain work permits and at the same regularise the work they are doing. We agree that migration flows should be regulated, but this does not mean that we turn our back on the reality that illegal immigrants will continue to arrive one way or another. If we do not want them to be perpetually employed and exploited in the hidden economy, we must take the initiative.

The UGT helps immigrant workers in several different ways: on the one hand, the advice centres of our organisation give advice on their legal situation, access to legal status, reuniting families and social matters. In the last two years, the employment initiative Integra has allowed us to train and find work for immigrant workers who are unemployed or who want to work in a different sector. However, for any question related to the labour sphere, the help given to immigrants is not different from that given to all workers through the sectoral federations. Our idea is to treat all workers on an equal footing, not to create parallel, specific structures which would lead to segregation instead of integration.

As the most representative trade union organisation in Spain, the political objective of the UGT is to ensure that the government puts in place a real immigration labour policy agreed by trade union and employers’ organisations. In future, one of our principal aims will be the use of collective bargaining to eliminate discrimination in the sphere of work on the basis of race, and to include in agreements the fact that in workplaces there are workers of different origins. In this aspect both the Florence Declaration of 1995 and the Council of European Directive 2000/43 relating to the principle of equal treatment of people regardless of racial or ethnic origin must be our point of reference.

Another concern which we have been working on for two years, is the position of immigrant women in Spain. We have looked at the difficulties they face in finding work, the risk of social exclusion, and the fact that in many cases they are dependent on their husbands for their legal status. Since 1996, we have been running a campaign on domestic labour, a sector where Spanish law affects both legal and illegal immigrant women, and which is characterised by its lack of social protection and labour rights. Obviously, this is shared by all workers in this sector but especially affects immigrant women.