English May 1st marks International Workers’ Day. The origins of May Day lie in the Haymarket Affair of 1886. On May 4th, trade unionists gathered in Chicago to demand the 8 hour day, a city in which the average working week was 60 hours long. The rally was attacked by police, and several organisers were framed for the use of explosives against the police. May Day has since been marked internationally as a day where the labour movement celebrates past and future struggles against exploitation and for dignity at work.
To mark this year’s International Workers Day, this article will explore the work of the Sindicato Obrero de Campo – Sindicato Andaluz de Trabajadores (SOC-SAT), a union of agricultural workers based in Andalucía, Spain. The Landworkers’ Alliance is working in solidarity with SOC-SAT through its international affiliation to La Via Campesina. The structure of the modern agricultural supply chain is global, with most of the region’s produce primarily exported for sale in supermarkets in France, Germany, and the UK. This means that to be successful, workers’ unions must also operate internationally, supporting each other at different points of the supply chain. To this end, the LWA has been increasing its cooperation with SOC-SAT, meeting regularly to discuss ways and methods of supporting the struggle of the workers who supply the British supermarket system.
Workers’ Struggles in the Sea of Plastic
Almeria is a 30 square mile province of Andalucia. It is known as the “sea of plastic” for the number of polytunnels that cover the landscape. The region produces 20% of Europe’s fresh produce for export to supermarkets in Northern Europe. Conditions in Almeria represent much of what is wrong with modern agriculture, based on severe exploitation of both land and people. Around 100,000 workers are employed there, mostly undocumented migrants from Morocco. These workers are employed under extremely precarious conditions. Many are employed on temporary day labourer contracts which offer no security of hours and are regularly not paid the legal minimum wage. Many workers live in shanties on the outskirts of farms, which receive no services from local government. In one shanty, drinking water supplies are maintained directly by SAT. Some of these workers have tried to tackle their exploitation at the hands of landowners and multinationals by organising themselves in SOC-SAT.
With so many workers concentrated in such a small area, in such an extreme condition of exploitation, struggles against corporate agribuinsesses are frequent. In January, workers in FreshTomExport launched an indefinite strike action over non-payment of the minimum wage and the insecurity of their contracts. These workers picked tomatoes for export to UK supermarkets. After 10 days of strike action, during which the workers were harassed by the Guardia Civil police force, the workers successfully secured back pay, the payment of the minimum wage, and the regularisation of their contracts. The strike at FreshTomExport shows the length that workers have to go in Almeria to secure rights that they are entitled to by law.
BioSabor was formerly an industrial producer which switched to organic methods in 2008 when the company realised it could receive a higher rate of profit from these products. However, its relationship with its workers remains unchanged. In 2018, union members at BioSabor subsidiary BioBelmonte went on strike over a series of violations of the minimum wage, precarious contracts, and the harassment of SOC-Sat representatives. When the union called the Labour Inspectorate to examine the company’s practices, BioBelmonte responded by docking the pay of all their workers.
Earlier this year, BioSabor’s practices were the subject of a documentary by Belgian broadcaster. This resulted in Aldi Belgium dropping them as a supplier. The LWA is currently campaigning for British buyers of BioSabor products, who are mostly small organic retailers rather than large supermarkets, to follow suit and refuse to stock BioSabor products until concrete action is taken on working conditions.
International solidarity action targeting buyers of produce has a track record of success in Almeria. At Eurosol, workers managed to secure a victory in 2018 with the help of the German internationalist group Interbrigadas. The grievances at Eurosol were much the same – non-payment of wages, unpaid overtime, and the sacking and intimidation of SOC-SAT members. Interbrigadas scoured the shelves of German supermarkets for Eurosol products, and alerted buyers of Eurosol products what was occurring in their supply chain. The resulting pressure from supermarkets concerned at damage to their reputation brought Eurosol back to the negotiating table.
However, today Eurosol workers are facing a new struggle. Eurosol workers stated that active union members have been moved from their respective worksites into a single worksite to isolate them from other workers. They say that temporary agency staff have been hired to replace the unionised workers in their previous worksites. Several of these unionised workers have been issued with warnings for various reasons – once they reach three warnings they can be fired. The aim is clearly to break the influence of the union over the workforce to roll back the gains of the 2018 strike. To protest this, SOC members will mark International Workers Day by marching on the company’s headquarters.
The Fight For Land and Work
As the current struggle in Eurosol shows, while the system of private ownership and production for corporate profit remain, companies have both the power and incentive to attack workers’ conditions. According to SOC-SAT, for a permanent end to this struggle, the current system of private ownership must be replaced by a system based on cooperative ownership of the land and means of production, based on the idea that the land should belong to those that work it.
SOC-SAT recognises that a programme of radical land reform is necessary to tackle the root causes of exploitation in Andalucía. Rural unemployment is endemic in Andalucía, standing at around 40% of the workforce. The high level of unemployment is a core driver of low wages and precarious conditions. Meanwhile, land is concentrated in an increasingly small number of hands, with family farms increasingly being absorbed into larger corporate structures. Large farms (over 100ha) represent just 3% of Andalusian landowners but own 53% of farmland. Much of this land is not used productively and is a source of speculation rather than production. Many large estates still belong to aristocratic families, such as the duchess of Alba, who owns over 34,000 ha, or the Duke of the Infantado who owns over 17,000 ha.
SOC-SAT was a core participant of the land occupations in the 1980s. These experiences have generated food, jobs and economic activities for cooperative members and for local communities. They have also turned day labourers and rural poor into freely associated workers, who can now farm in good living and working conditions and participate in decision-making. In the village of Marinaleda, these occupations led to the creation of several workers’ cooperatives on previously unproductive, privately owned land. The profits of these cooperatives help fund education and social welfare programmes in the village. The occupations encouraged the Andalusian government to set up the Andalusian Agrarian Reform Institute (ARIA), which took large amounts of unproductive land into public ownership. The La Verde cooperative, set up on public lands, is a leader in agroecological farming practices in Spain and was the first registered organic producer in the country.
In 2010, Andalucía’s local government announced the abolition of ARIA and the privatisation of its lands. This prompted SOC-SAT to resume its programme of land occupations, seeking to create worker cooperatives on land which would be sold to private speculators. Over the last decade, SOC-SAT have been involved in occupations at the Finca Somonte farm. The farm used to be owned by ARIA and was occupied by 500 SOC-SAT members in 2011 when it was due to be auctioned off. Since then, SOC-SAT have been evicted 7 times by the Guardia Civil. Despite this, SOC-SAT have been able to plant 200 olive trees and have been able to raise chickens, goats, and rainfed legumes on the land, employing 20 cooperative members. “Twenty of us eat and sell from four hectares,” says Lola Alvarez, SOC-SAT spokesperson in Corboda, “Just imagine if we were able to cultivate more land! What if all unemployed workers had access to public land?”
Help Support SOC-SAT
This is just a short introduction to the work of SOC-SAT and the struggles the union has led over land and workers’ rights in Andalucía. As mentioned earlier, the LWA is deepening its cooperation with unions in the agricultural supply chain and exploring ways of supporting the organisation of agricultural workers both in Spain and in the UK. If you would be interested in hearing more about the LWA’s work supporting migrant agricultural workers, please get in touch with Catherine McAndrew at catherine.mcandrew@staging.landworkersalliance.org.uk
For more information about SOC-SAT, you can find:
- SOC-SAT’s website a Facebook page
- An in depth report on factors driving exploitation in agriculture by the European Coordination of La Via Campesina
- A short document from Access to Land on SOC-SAT’s land occupations
- Information about Ethical Consumer’s campaign to hold supermarkets to account for exploitation in Almeria
- Interbrigadas’ website a Facebook page
