Eighteen and a half million people work legally in Spain. Many are torn between the comfort of having a job and fear of losing it. Today is May Day, Labor Day. With 20% unemployment, the expected years of wage restraint and an uncertain future, is there anything to celebrate? We asked employees -14 to 30 men and 16 women, from different professions and generations. Sunday 1
May Mother's Day. Family dinner at my grandparents' house. Fifteen people from three generations crammed into the typical table of 1.80 with wide wings. Paella to stop a train. Parents seventy, children between 30 and 50, children and grandchildren from the twenties. The grandfather took early retirement years ago, at 62, after four decades of worker in a company of INI. The grandmother continues her eternal day housewife, augmented with the care of a grandchild because the four children and their partners work. Well, it worked. Three are unemployed. One is surveyor. Another, an accountant. Another lawyer. Two delivery charge and the third has been exhausted. But all three have the wages of their spouse: two with solid works, another redundancy plan for your business planning. The only couple who kept their jobs they have lowered the salary by 5% by decree: they are servants. All grandchildren are studying, unless the greatest. A boy of 25 who left the books at the ESO and today, without work or unemployment, plans to return to class. On television, the news opens with the May Day demonstration. Candido Mendez and Ignacio Fernández Toxo behind the familiar banner of decent employment. Today is also the Labour Party, but is there anything to celebrate?.
This is probably the worst since May 1, 1976, to computerize the Labour Force Survey. This feast would be a miniature EPA. A family hit by the crisis. Not the best stops. Neither of the worst. With 4.3 million registered unemployed in March were expected to reach about five in the April-EPA, 42% youth unemployment and 1.3 million households with all members unemployed, it seems that there is not much celebrate. The Minister of Labour, Valeriano Gómez, who has grown old before our eyes since his appointment, announced "decades" of wage restraint. And the Economy, Elena Salgado, recognizes the desperate unemployment rate fall to only 1% annually until reaching 16% in 2014. Not to get chest. Despite the compliments they receive in Brussels for their cuts and reforms at home may feel Salgado Gómez moving the earth beneath his feet. Something happens to many of the 18 ½ million workers engaged in legally in Spain. They live in suspense.
tranquility was torn between having a job, any job, and fear losing it. Among the anxiety of seeing fire to his family, friends, even fellow next door, and the relief is not one of them. Between the responsibility to take on sacrifices to keep the job and the suspicion of giving a conquered land for generations just to gain the benefit of the employer. Of course there are those who are enthusiastic, motivated, eager to conquer the world. But there is a latent sense of unease. Fear, in the worst case. Of virgin, virgin, I stay as I am, at best.
"Gensanta, coming for my job." This is "separate blocks," the cartoonist Antonio Forge Forges, "thinking more neurons silently through the hard workers." Forges, Medal for Merit in Work 2007, has 40 years in his cartoons depicting the flora and fauna of the ecosystem work. "The theater work has always been a reflection of human beings struggling to make his own power." So drawn to climb. In the exploited. For the balls. To the leaders and henchmen. Years ago introduced a new specimen: the fellow. In one of his last jokes, smoked a cigar with big boss dozens of them as bite. Smithies, 69, began working at 14 as an apprentice in TVE and knows what it is to start from below. "In these decades there have been big changes, but not for the better," he says. "Now they are trying to impose on the masters of pasta the 'this is what you get', the 'spillover' and 'every man for himself'. The neoliberals and chamullo-capitalism have been decimating the union of workers so that they can enslaved to the fear of the nothingness of unemployment. And the unions, protest formulas XIX century. when strikes at the pump fuel instead of giving to others tease currante leaving no refueling? At the 'this is what there ' should answer: 'Dare, we are united, but still the century ".
Almudena Fontecha will now after May Day banner. Fontana, 48, nursing and UGT responsible for equality, create that there is something to celebrate: "Work." fashion seems to be underestimated. This day is a reminder that society, rights, the welfare state is built around work. It can be a mason or computer, but we are all workers. "Of course there is uncertainty, and fear, he admits," but also anger and outrage at the causes of all this. "This is the crisis, insecurity, mass unemployment. Fontana having trouble at home. Her husband retired in January after years without work. "The strike is devastating. It breaks the family. It's hard for the one who stays and who goes to work." His eldest son, "a teenager of 32 years," as they put it, has no job. "Live out, but make the purchase in my fridge." Tupperware traffic, the familiar mattress is avoiding, he argues, the conflict seems inevitable that these unemployment figures, "How many grandparents pensions keep children and grandchildren. With that puts the pot for everyone."
Fontana has seen other crises. "But overall this feels so new. It affects us all." Also trade unionists. "With so many workers in sectors as different and not worth a single answer. We are trying to structure another." Supports the criticism, but you worthless "war", she said, has been launched against the unions. "They say they do not represent anyone. We have a million members, and we submit to their vote. The union weapons are not obsolete. What is missing is unity. There is a loss of working class consciousness. The elites who decide to have caught us the bases. How? Individualizing relations, early retirees to generation transmission of values, dividing us, confronting, creating classes among us. on us to rebel. "
Isolated, disconnected, distant, alone. So many workers feel today, according to Juan Jose Castillo, author of The Loneliness of globalized worker (The Books of the waterfall) and Professor of Sociology at the Complutense University. Castillo receives its power, in whose court a banner calling for a collective manifestation of Future Youth Without attended by 2,000 people. "Think of a teleoperator confined in a box," he suggests. "She is alone, but that has to do only with work in isolation. Also with the outsourcing, offshoring, the fragmentation of production. Loneliness is also unable to defend itself." Castillo research how work and the conditions under which affect is organized lifestyle.
"There are companies with five different conventions for people working side by side. Patterns that tell the staff that either work harder and earn less, or take the plant out. Firms that train their managers to motivate staff and then not provide a place to eat. Not to mention the low paid, precarious, the eternal temporary or scholarship seniors making functions. " Forges fan - "I have taken many classes from his jokes" - Daily Castillo sees his characters in the flesh. Then the laugh becomes rage: "The discourse of 'this is modernity, globalization and the future' is a bike, "he notes." This is not social determinism has not been for nothing. No one has to do with technology, but with the speculation and the pursuit of maximum profit. There is another way to do things, not less productive. Some of us rebel, but we are not heard. I do not understand how this does not explode. "
Luis Garrido disagrees with his colleague. Professor of Sociology at the UNED and one of the fathers of the EPA, Garrido is considered an authority on labor market analysis. According to him," we like to think that the blame for everything is the market that is insatiable, from entrepreneurs, who exploit, the government, which saw him come and not fix it. The people blame the system, and they to the system, but we are all responsible. "This bad conscience is behind the relative social tranquility despite the unemployment figures that he qualifies." 40% of youth unemployment rate is misleading. It is actually 20%, the rest are studying. A trained youth have been stalled labor integration, but the worse off are not formed. They have a 50% unemployment. And oil future. "
are these young people who left school in the fat years to work in construction or hospitality." They wanted his car and his hundred euros in my wallet. They made a bet and lost. They feel that society says: 'It's wrong to leave school. " But is that those who have studied have a lot to reduce their curriculum. 45% of academics working in non-university jobs. And listen to the company: 'It's wrong not to study something practical. " At bottom, it's true. We must study what is needed, with the front Infoempleo, yes. Choose race for the five years of college is very nice, but then you have to live it 50. "
Garrido believes that we live in the" dictatorship of the working medium. "Explains:" One thing that favors the 51% people, costs change, and youth are always in the other 49%. Permanent workers are 66% and always win. Labor reforms, which have been a disaster, and unions have had them. To end this would have to put everything upside down. Meanwhile, young people live through the "generational compact." They have given public space and steady jobs in exchange for greater freedom at home. They live in the independent republic of your room, with eurillos over, pulling. "It's not a lost generation, he says." One generation is not lost, but an earthquake and, at a delicate time, can not hurt. I sang and Celentano, Chi non Lavoro, non fa l'amore ".
" A mentally healthy person is one able to love and work. "Antonio Espino quoted Freud to illustrate the importance of work on health. Espino is a psychiatrist and head of public service Majadahonda mental health, a Madrid town belt where residents from senior executives to workers by the piece. His team is "more cases of occupational stress that alcoholism and eating disorders together." Stress is not a disease but a warning, he explains. "It may be an opportunity to grow or risk destructuring makes you stay on the road. The difference lies in the vulnerability of the person. In its responsiveness to the conflict based on their genetic background, their learning, their support, their weapons to face life. " The stress can eventually cause a deterioration in mental health, he said, derived from an excessive workload (burn-out), violence in it (bullying) or not having work in spite of oneself. "The rest, all that posvacacional syndrome and toxic bosses, is a thing of the children of occupational psychology. What if they ask you if your boss is lousy or return to work bothers you say yes?" Jokes. "We're creating a whole pathology of discomfort to confuse an upset with a disorder. They are overusing mental health services and these people are overmedicating antidepressants are not always effective, however, can create dependency."
35% of workers have symptoms of severe stress, 13% is considered a victim of bullying, 40% than before the crisis, and 11% admit to be in "inner resignation" as Iñaki Piñuel, psychologist, professor of human resources at the University of Alcalá de Henares and responsible Cisneros Barometer, a survey measuring psychosocial risks work. Piñuel believes that the crisis is crushing both the unemployed and the employed. "There is now no more bullying because there is more bad bosses, but because there are more workers to swallow. Who has a job he holds. The crisis is forcing many to accept unacceptable conditions for fear of the abyss of unemployment. Days eternal harmful direction, work harder, charge less. Their rebellion is disconnected emotional labor, that is the inner resignation "he says.
employees are physically present. They are, but are not. No protest. Do not act. Do not get wet. They try to do the deed. And to save his skin. Waiting will not touch them. tripping and betraying your partner if necessary. "There are good times for claims. The strike failed, as well as unions have become part of the status quo, because it works a sort of pact of mutual indifference. No one supports anyone. And like that, the lack of solidarity, we are morally repugnant, we have invented an alibi: I do not sympathize with you, but do not expect you to do me. It may seem an apocalyptic scenario, but this is what you get. And somebody has to say if we want change, "sentence.
Manuel Pimentel know what to change course midstream. Lawyer and engineer, was Minister of Labour with the PP. Before resigning, at 40 years, differences with Aznar, and reconverted to editor in charge of the editorial Almuzara, struggled from the government at a rate of over 20% unemployment. just to exercise, successfully, as a mediator between AENA and air traffic controllers in the negotiation of working conditions and remuneration of one of the best paid groups of the country. Even some of them feel exploited and underpaid, notes. In his view, there is a kind of "state of unrest" among workers who, having their base in the "national emergency" unemployment, "has some psychological, and the danger of become chronic."
"There is some solace in self-pity. It seems we are longing to hear bad news, we love to fatalism. But the reality is ahead, and are laying the groundwork to get through this. Changing mindset, yes." According to Pimentel, everyone wants to be paid, and that's not possible. "Young people have a future, but will have to find. The State must provide the best education, but it will not guarantee employment. We need a generation that takes. We've gone from a lyric willing to work Darwinian epic. The epic requires sacrifice, constant tension, and tension nobody likes. But if you stop, you die. "
In my grandparents' house, the desktop is extended. We talk about everything but stop. It happens in the best families. When a problem develops into a cyst, is obvious. You do not get the nail on the head. The bells of the seven in the cuckoo clock dissolve the meeting. Each owl to olive. All have eaten too much. Still, paella has left to give and take. The grandmother is busy in the kitchen. Each daughter or daughter comes out with a tupperware of rice under the arm. Until next Sunday. See if there is any news then. Good news.
By Leonardo Moledo 
