Our task takes place in El Condado, as the budget limits and the need of concentrating efforts and take advantage of the resorts that our workmates in SOC have already there unable us to make further interventions. The strawberry growing covers every range of militant intervention. It musn't be considered merely as a rural and isolated one. It's a chance for CGT-A to develope a global politic discours: ecology (use of fertilizers banned in the EU), food security, chemical industry, patents (the strawberry is bought to the California University, that holds its patent), rational use of land resources (against the land intensive exploitation and the monoculture), labor exploitation, "sexual violence" against working women, questioning of the special agricultural regime ("régimen especial agrario"), immigration and labor precariousness, lodging, shanty towns, social exclusion....
We in CGT-A deemed a priority for 2004 strawberry "campaign" to restore the bonds with Huelva organizations and to take on a politic cartography of this situation in the hope to undertake a global immigration work throughout Andalusia regions, following the ones already made in Úbeda (Jaén), Motril (Granada)...etc. Interventions in this "campaña": Since march, Carlos Serrano and Luis de los Santos, workmates in the Inmigration Secretary, have developed a work in these fields:
1. Visits to working centers.
2. Visits to "shanty towns" settlements.
3. Development of social networks in Huelva. Alliance policy. "Mesa del Temporero" (Day Laborer Committee).
4. Development of support group to these networks in Seville.
1. Visits to working centers. Groups of workers from Romania, Poland and Magreb.
Together with SOC assistants, we detected and reported before the Working Office many irregularities. We specially worked with working women from Romania, the most disadvantaged group comparing to the other collectives contracted in advance in their countries (the polish women, for example). We reported several failures to comply with the working agreement as: housing overcrowding, lack of translations of contracts, violence exerced by the employers against working women, passports retaining by agricultural cooperatives to control them (it was reported to the Huelva Prosecution Office with the signatures of SOC, CGT-A and S.U. general secretaries). We have often held assemblies with these working women from Romania and made some contacts for future harvest "campaigns". The vast majority of them lacked of union experience and nevertheless they ask us for help as soons as they had problems. Thank to this CGT-A reappeared in the mass media as a union dedicated to inmigration and agriculture labor matters. An important new point is that we helped to visualize the labor precariousness of these collective, so far ignored. Never before in Huelva working conditions of this group had been reported, in a sort of disruption of the "silence pact" between CC.OO., U.G.T. (majority unions) and the employers'organization about these conflicts with working women with contracts signed in their countries, "silence pact" intending to maintain and increase these kind of working conditions.
2. Visits to "shanty towns" settlements. Groups of workers from Magreb and the South of Sahara.
We concentrated on this group, as José MarÃa Castellanos, a CGT-Huelva workmate, worked for APDH-A (Pro Human Rights Association-Andalusia). The main difficulty with these collectives was that, due to their extreme impoverishment and precariousness, they demanded other basic assistance that we decided not to cover (apart from concrete distributions of clothes in this settlements). The task we undertook was one of a different kind: Get a radiography of the groups living there and offer them the union reference of CGT-A, as most of them move to Catalonia in the summer, and then to Jaén. There was some chance of mobilization, mainly with subsaharian workers, but considering the delay of the campaign and the weakness of the social movements in Huelva we decided to give it up and concentrate in the visibilization of this situation. We couldn't cover everything, and so we decided to develop a more specific union work and to try to plan better our intervention in future "campañas". Anyway, we have some contacts available, that may be used either in Lleida (Catalonia) or in Jaén.
3. Development of social networks in Huelva. Alliance policy. "Mesa del Temporero" (Day Laborer Committee).
This Day Laborer Committee coordinates all our work in Huelva and is formed by CGT-A, S.U, SOC, APDH-A, I.U. (Communist Party), working migrant women collective Alminar, Ecologistas en Acción and other individuals. We realized the need to promote this space, in a sort of deadlocked state when we arrived, so that we all could respond to the Huelva Immigration Committee (CCOO,UGT, FRSHuelva, Subdelegación –the Governmet representation in Huelva-..). This space uses as its main tool the "Day Laborer Rights Carta" ("Carta de Derechos del Temporero"), that isn't revolutionary, but implies an improvement in labor conditions for these workers, although it is clear that it will require constant reelaboration if we keep on with this space and are able to gain more and more contributions. Before this, only some of the unions, mainly SOC, respond to these situations, but from now on we always unite to give a collective answer to these problems (without loosing our singularities). Our weakness in CGT, and that of the social movements in Huelva, make it more neccesary to gather efforts and resources in this space. It had positive effects: renforcement of the alliances with S.U. (we could use their office, phone, fax and resources for our work), with SOC (we executed together a campaign in the country estates and collaborate with them, basicly in the legal consultancy carried out by Luis Santos and the use of their office Mazagón, number 9.
Interventions with the Day Laborer committee:
- Assemblies con working women form Romania in Mazagón.
- Reports before the Workig Office (together with SOC and SU)
- Release of the book "La fresa Amarga", that is intended to help for next year's strawberry "campaña".
- Report before the Foreign Prosecution Office in Huelva, signed by CGT-A, SOC and SU General Secretaries, broadly covered in the local and andalusian press, linking it to the attacks against migrant workers in El Ejido.
- Meeting wiht the Government Representative in Huelva to expose him the situation and introduce our Day Laborer Committee to him.
- We intend to meet also with the Representative of the Autonomic Government ("Junta de AndalucÃa") and of the Social Security.
- Elaboration of a report about the 2004 campaign by the two CGT-A workmates and Miguel (SU)
- Elaboration of audiovisual material.
- Elaboration of a global proposal by these three unions and people form social movements in Seville, regardinf the union intervention from october 2004. We are still with it and intend to discuss it among unions and social movements.
The negative side is that we weren't able to coordinate any street mobilization due to the lack of time and joint experience within this Committe, and also due to priority commitments of some of us (SOC, for example). We also failed to bring some people from UMT (Morocco) to report about the agricultural situation in Huelva. The positive one is that we colud lay the foundations of a joint work that will begin next year with the creation of a union space inside this Committee to reclaim the improvements contained in the aforementioned "Day Laborer Rights Carta" ("Carta de Derechos del Temporero"), thinking of next year's signature of the Provincial Country Agreement. Some workmates have already made contact with unions in Romania.
4.- Development of support group to these networks in Seville. Another important new point has been the promotion, thank to the commitment of CGT-A in Huelva, of a working group for that Day Laborer Committee in Seville, city in which the migration work was deadlocked from the 2002 University "sit-in". We had several meetings with different people and groups as CNT, and we are elaborating a working plan for next year (as this work is intended to intervene for next "campaña", not for the current one). Legal and scientific studies, juridic reports and denounces, films, communication campaigns, economic self-management, precariousness, are some of the ideas we reached in our "brainstorming" session. This is a completely open group or the people in Seville and in September we have promoted a big forum where we have dealt with these problems again. The interesting matter is how CGT-A has reached to set forth a social group concerned with migration in Huelva and Seville, taking into account the previous negative experience, where we intend to recover and build a group that doesn't only intervene around the strawberry harvest "campaign", but also has as a core axis that of precariousness and migration, both areas requiring the confluence of leftist and autonomous spaces, collectives and people.
Report made by Luis MarÃa de los Santos Castillo and Carlos Serrano. CGT-A Immigration Secretary