African swine fever had its first significant impact on employment. The Department of Business and Labor of the Generalitat has approved this year the temporary work regulation measure (ERTE) presented by the temporary work company GCTPlus and which concerns 458 people. This company provides personnel to four slaughterhouses in Santa Eugènia de Berga, in the Osona region (Barcelona), which belong to the Aragonese meat products company Grupo Jorge. Faced with the African swine fever crisis, the group has decided to redirect the flow of hair and to eliminate for the moment the slaughterhouses closest to the source of the virus, concentrated in Monte de Collserola, near Barcelona. Before this decision, the slaughterhouses did not need to be returned to the workers and they were returned to the temporary employment company, which in turn presented an ERTE due to conditions of greater resistance due to the end of production. Ministry sources explain that this is the only ERTE presented for this reason.
African swine fever (ASF) is a virus that has not been detected in Spain since 1994 and has been detected in some wild animals in Collserola for several weeks. The virus is very contagious and deadly in wild boars and boars – not for other species or for humans, who can eat this meat without risk -, and poses a serious threat to wild boar farms in the area, but for now it continues to focus on Collserola, and only with 13 cases of wild boars detected with ASF. When these cases were detected, even though the virus was very contained, Spain lost its status as an ASF-free country, which automatically closed export markets, except for those that were manually opened to accept the purchase of Spanish pork products outside the affected area.
Faced with this threat, large pork production groups are trying to play their cards to avoid being reported in export markets and to avoid future restrictions in case the source of contagion spreads and affects their facilities. The Osona region is very active in the production and processing of cerdo meat, but despite its relative proximity to Barcelona, the Aragonés group has decided to do without these slaughterhouses.
Sources from the Department of Labor explain that the ERTE affects 458 employees of the temporary employment company, and that it is a suspension of contract. As an ERTE, workers who have spent more than a year in this temporary work company can request the benefit associated with this file, similar to unemployment compensation. The ministry explains, however, that it does not know how many of these workers meet the necessary conditions and can benefit from this provision.
The majority of workers in the slaughterhouse sector are people of migrant origin and turnover is high. This is a sector, throughout Spain but also in the slaughterhouses concerned and in this region, which has experienced very delicate situations in terms of labor relations. Over the years, the unions, both the mayors of CC OO and the UGT, but especially the COS union, very present in this territory, have come under pressure to put an end to the figure of meat cooperatives, which employed workers as false independents while they all worked for the same company. The pressure forced the government to accept letters on this subject and to regularize thousands of jobs, and for this reason it resorted, among other things, to temporary employment companies.
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