After completing his working day, sweeping the streets of Barcelona has aroused the discomfort of cleaning workers. Waiting for the autopsy to clarify whether the death of the 51 -year -old woman, the operators denounce that their working conditions before episodes of high temperatures are unacceptable. There are protocols, yes, but it is “urgent to review them,” demand unions. The Barcelona City Council has collected the glove and announced, on Tuesday, that it will bring together all the companies “to evaluate heat protocols,” said the first deputy mayor, Laia Bonet.
Montse’s family, by the company FCC and the City Council, asks that, meanwhile, health prioritizes: “that life is worth more than work,” says his brother -in -law, Manuel Ceacero, informal spokesman for the family. This same Tuesday, in a new day of intense heat, another worker has suffered dizziness on Marina Street and has been transferred to the ambulatory.
On Saturday, with temperatures that exceeded 35 degrees in the center of Barcelona, for seven hours, in strips of maximum suffocation: from 14.30 to 21.30. The City Council states that the worker carried out her service “with all normality.” The family, on the other hand, argues that, when he returned home, he told his mother that he had spoken with the manager because he was frankly badly. A few minutes before he died, Montse too, saying that that afternoon he thought he “died” and had suffered cramps and pains in arms, chest and cervical. About 23.00, when he started dinner, he collapsed. He died on the spot.
His sister, Clara Aguilar, and his brother -in -law, Manuel, declared that night before the Mossos and mentioned. The provisional autopsy, as the country has learned, speaks of “trauma” (the woman hit her head against the ground when losing knowledge), but it will be the final autopsy, which will be ready in two or three weeks, which can determine the causes of that fading. “Companies cannot mistreat their workers, they have to invest in health. We would like to stop cleaning services in homage to my sister -in -law,” says Manuel, crying, from the Sancho de Ávila funeral home in Barcelona, where Montse has fired Tuesday.
To the funeral dozens of workers have attended to say goodbye to Montse. “It could have happened to anyone. The protocols do not work. They tell us to call the manager, but if you are not fixed, it is difficult to do those things,” Emiliano lamented. “They inform you where the climatic shelters are from and little else,” he laments. Other colleagues criticize that the uniform with which they work “does not perspire.” Manuel has addressed them in the funeral home: “We have to do everything possible so that this does not repeat itself, it is inhuman. In addition, no one has come from the company or the City Council to say goodbye to what was an employee of the cleaning service.”
Fear of reprisals
the workers have transferred their discomfort through messages on social networks and the victim’s family. “We are not paid when we complain about working conditions, sun, snow, wind water.” “When there are heat blows they give us a Coca-Cola.” “The plans [el recorrido a cubrir en cada jornada] They are kilometric and full sun. ”The protocols contemplate that a worker who is wrong, admit the unions, can stop and even leave their job. But it does not usually be done because that can have negative consequences; for example, an unfavorable report that can then lead to“ sanctions, threats or non -renewals, ”laments a worker.
Waiting to know if death has, Obreras commissions has urged companies to “urgently review the action protocols.” The Barcelona City Council has divided the cleaning contract among four companies, which distributes different areas of the city. For the union, it is necessary to “urgently review the action protocols” and undertake improvements to an increase in temperatures that seems to go more year after year. You have to adapt the work schedules and shifts, plan the routes “with hydration points” and shadow areas “and verify that work vehicles are heated.
The current protocol signed by FCC, which the country has accessed, foresees, in the case of public cleaning, schedules: of the day (from 13 to 18 hours) as long as the State Meteorology Agency has decreed average (orange) or high risk (orange) or high (red). It was not the case on Saturday, when the yellow alert for Barcelona was not even activated.
The template has also bothered the initial reaction of the Barcelona City Council to the event. On Monday morning, the head of cleaning and collection services, Carlos Vázquez, who there were no indications of negligence and therefore there was nothing to investigate. Given the pressure and the evidence that the worker had expressed her discomfort during the day, the session had to rectify at night and announced the opening of an informative file to the FCC company, which held Montse as a employee for three years.
