On November 26, the Bilbao Workers’ Self-Defense Network delivered a letter in which it gathered the demands of the cleaning company’s chief Limpieza Arana – Fernández Aguilar, starting a labor dispute. The company is based on Matiko Street in Uribarri’s Bilbaíno district and has a workforce of several dozen workers. One of them is the woman who came into contact with the network a few weeks ago to report and make known her work situation and her work situation.
The Langile Self-Defense Network has listed the reasons why the conflict starts: the worker is working without a contract, even though he has frequently demanded from the contract, to regularize his situation; the entrepreneur applies economic sanctions for “not properly cleaning up their homes”, without evidence or arguments; forcing him to perform unpaid work; even when he has been ill, forcing him to work; all this requires absolute flexibility and availability.
To all these abuses, the network has added a factor that further worsens the worker’s situation: the workload assigned to the worker and, consequently, the one-month wage “depends entirely on the employer’s will”. And that, as you have stressed, gives way to a more dependent employment relationship.
At the same time as the exploitation situation is known, the Self-Defense Network has denounced the "unsustainable" working conditions of the worker. By the way, they have used public denunciation to point out that companies in the domestic labor sector, to increase their profits, take advantage of the feminization of the sector, which allows them to devalue wages, worsen working conditions and “increase the gap between the different layers within the working class”, and of the vulnerable situation of migrant workers, resulting in labor relations with signs of slavery.
Once the conflict has started, the network has shown its intention to continue strengthening its public character, provided that the employer fails to comply with the requirements that have been passed on to it.