Government fails to provide promised benefits for agricultural workers

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The Spanish government has not yet met commitments it made in 1996 to provide unemployment cover for casual agricultural workers and to reform the Special Agricultural Social Security Scheme. In May 1999, trade unions representing agricultural workers began a series of protests with the aim of bringing about change.

In Spain, agricultural workers (as well as those who work at sea and domestic employees, among others) are not included in the country's General Social Security Scheme (Régimen General de la Seguridad Social), but are covered by specific regulations - in this case the Special Agricultural Social Security Scheme (Régimen Especial Agrario de la Seguridad Social, REASS). This fragmentation of the social security structure raises the problem that workers under special schemes have fewer rights than the others, have less cover and are less well protected in a given situation of need. This is such a clear case of inequality established by law that since 1994 Article 10 of the Law on the General Scheme has laid down that the regulations of the special schemes should take steps to harmonise the schemes whenever it is financially possible. Also, in 1995, all the parliamentary groups approved a document known as the "Toledo pact" that established the same recommendation, to be specified in a series of legal reforms (ES9710220F).

To summarise the differences, employed farm workers do not have the general rights to early retirement and suffer stricter conditions for receiving economic benefits for incapacity. Permanent workers do not receive unemployment benefit in cases of partial or seasonal unemployment and casual workers are not entitled to contributory unemployment benefit unless they live in Andalusia or Extremadura. In these regions, land workers have another special scheme because the average unemployment rate is higher than in other agricultural regions.

In this context, in 1996 the recently elected People's Party government signed an agreement with the trade unions representing agricultural workers, which included the government's agreement, as of January 1998, to extend contributory unemployment benefit to casual agricultural workers across the whole country. At a more general level, it also agreed to create a working group to propose a legal reform of the REASS aimed at bringing the benefits for agricultural workers into line with those of other workers. In May 1999, almost 18 months after the date on which the government agreed to provide unemployment cover, casual agricultural workers all over Spain (with the exception of Andalusia and Extremadura) still do not receive unemployment benefit. Furthermore, three years after the agreement, the working group to reform the REASS has met only twice, with the government responsible for suspending the meetings.

In the current economic climate, the government's failure to meet its commitments is in some quarters considered intolerable for the workers concerned. In 1998 the National Employment Institute (Instituto Nacional de Empleo, INEM), the organisation responsible for providing unemployment benefit, had a surplus of social contributions of ESP 300 billion (which it is devoting to allowances for employers). However, according to union sources, meeting the commitments made in the 1996 pact on casual agricultural workers would involve a net cost of only ESP 150 billion. In addition, there has been an increase in productivity in Spanish agriculture and an improvement in the income of agricultural businesses, though agricultural wages are the lowest in any Spanish sector of production.

In response to these circumstances, in May 1999 the agricultural workers' federations affiliated to the CC.OO and UGT trade union confederations, FECAMPO-CC.OO and FTT-UGT, organised a first phase of joint demonstrations in several Spanish provinces. Hundreds of agricultural workers staged lock-ins in INEM offices and rallies outside the provincial offices of INEM in Murcia, Cádiz, Huelva, Granada, Albacete, Jaén, Castellón, Valencia, Zamora, Cuenca, Valladolid, Ávila and Málaga between 17 and 21 May.