Barcelona cleaning workers before the strike: “We are an invisible collective” | News from Catalonia

The workers of Barcelona’s cleaning and garbage collection services have called a strike that will begin at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday the 22nd and will end at 10:00 p.m. on December 25th. Jaume Collboni’s government team has been mediating for days with the four companies that have subcontracted the city’s cleaning to prevent the image of these festivities from being that of an unhealthy Barcelona full of garbage. The threat is getting closer due to the opposing positions maintained by the cleaning companies and the UGT union.

In Barcelona, ​​4,500 cleaning workers work, many of them while the city sleeps, in the four contracts that provide service to the city. The majority of these employees in reflective uniforms believe that they are “invisible” to the rest of the neighbors. An invisibility that can disappear if the negotiations do not reach a successful conclusion and garbage begins to accumulate in the streets. The workers demand from the cleaning contract companies (FCC, Urbaser, CLD, Valoriza) the salary review corresponding to 2023 while, in parallel, the negotiation of the new agreement continues. Companies, for their part, refuse to increase salaries by a single cent.

Ramon Cebrián has been working in the cleaning service in Barcelona since he was 18 and is close to retirement. He works for FCC and is one of the UGT representatives who called the strike. “The companies have closed altogether and the City Council hides behind the fact that it has already paid what was agreed with the contractors,” he laments. Cebrián knows the profile of the majority of the squad. “We are a very variable group. On the one hand, there are very young people and on the other, like me, many others close to retirement. The percentage of women is increasing. In some companies it is 40% and in others, unfortunately, only 20%,” he explains. Salaries range between 1,300 euros per month and 2,000 depending on night shifts and other bonuses. There are operators with permanent, temporary and discontinuous permanent contracts that cover vacations or holidays. “We only ask for 3.1% of the 2023 salary review and the companies flatly refuse,” denounces Cebrián. “This Christmas we are on the verge of a strike like the ones that occurred in 1978 and 1979,” he laments.

The city is divided into four zones and each of them belongs to one of the companies. The central zone belongs to FCC and includes the cleaning of the districts of Ciutat Vella, Eixample and Gràcia; the western zone belongs to CLD and deals with Sants-Montjuïc, Les Corts and Sarrià-Sant Gervasi; the northern zone is owned by Valoriza, in charge of Horta-Guinardó and Nou Barris; and the east is in charge of Urbaser with Sant Andreu and Sant Martí. In total, 4,500 workers and 1,500 vehicles to clean streets, beaches and green areas and collect city waste. In addition, there are 25,000 containers scattered around. For all this, the City Council spends 340 million euros annually.

Nuria Jové is 47 years old and has been driving, always at night, an organic waste collection truck in the districts of Sant Martí and Sant Andreu for 15 years. “The work is hard, but you get used to it,” highlights this employee whose schedule is from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. “Many of us work when the rest sleep. Sometimes, we seem invisible,” says this woman, who has seen everything, “especially drunks and people relieving themselves among the containers,” says Jové, who met her husband “in the garbage,” smiles: they are companions They work, they have two children and they try to balance different shifts as best they can: “I put my children to bed and I go to work.” The worker warns of the consequences of a three-day protest if there is no agreement: “I can’t imagine what the city will look like after three days without a washing service, leaf collection, or garbage… the stench will be pharaonic.” “We don’t like this strike, but we are forced because the companies have no intention of fixing it,” he laments.

Enric Montes is one of the Ciutat Vella street sweepers. He is 35 years old and has been working in city cleaning since 2012. He knows perfectly the services carried out in one of the busiest and most difficult districts of Barcelona. “We do washing, collecting syringes, collecting furniture and other bulky items, sweeping, emptying trash cans, overflowing containers… We do everything, but our work is not valued,” he laments. Montes recalls that in most neighborhoods in the old town there are no containers and garbage collection is done by hand. “Many times we are invisible, but if the companies do not reach an agreement it will be very noticeable that we have not cleaned up,” he warns.

At the beginning of this month, the first deputy mayor of Barcelona, ​​Laia Bonet, demanded that the four companies sit down to negotiate the salary update. Bonet considered “intolerable” and “inadmissible” that the contractors maintained that the salary increase was going to be zero percent and recalled that, last July, the full City Council approved an additional contribution of 168 million euros to the concessionaires of the cleaning of Barcelona, ​​which represents 10% of the cost of the contract, the most important in the city, in application of the price review. “Therefore, it was done knowing that an important part of the costs of this contract goes to chapter one, that is, to the salaries of the workers,” he said.