“Whoever has broken pants always pays everything.” These words, which seem to be a proverb but which are good for the new times, were recently released by a TAV worker wearing a helmet and a blanket on his head. In the Hernani stretch he was looking towards the bridge road that is being built just off the Urumea River. Authorities are finding it increasingly difficult to bridge the social gap of 99%, which is more difficult to explain how in a public work such as the High-Speed Train job insecurity has become the main tool to bridge the contractors' budget.

Almost eleven years ago the first part of the Basque Y project was built in Álava, near the towns of Arrazua-Ubarrundia, near Vitoria-Gasteiz. Its promoters established that by 2013 the capitals of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country will be connected by rail about half an hour. Time has put things in place: they have delayed the date of completion of the works, as they have added minutes to the route – according to the latest information it would be almost equivalent to travelling by train or by car from one capital to another.

Until 2023 the TAV will not be launched, but only half of the route has yet been made and the most difficult sections remain: Link of Bergara – in the center of the “Y” – and access to the capitals. The design of the latter has recently been agreed between the Basque Government, the municipalities and the Government of Spain. Apart from some models of stations and the square meters that remain for the urban operation, it has not materialized much more; it would be "reckless", according to the Minister of Development, Iñigo de la Serna, to fix the financing and the dates.

Regarding the delay in the construction of the TAV, the Infrastructure Minister, Arantxa Tapia, said in the Chain Ser that there has been “a political decision” – in line with what was said two months ago by spokesman Josu Erkoreka. The TAV has been a valuable piece in the negotiating table game of the budgets of Spain, whose price we knew last week: The Rajoy Executive will set aside EUR 3,380 million for railway line builders.

For reasons, we have buried billions of euros under concrete for more than two decades, while public debt, cutbacks and privatisations have increased. The research group Ekopol from the UPV/EHU and the University of Barcelona has explained to us that the money spent on the TAV will never be recovered. As far as energy and the pollution of works are concerned, it takes tens of years for a negative assessment to be made.

Much has been said about the ecological and economic influence of the high-speed train, but do we know the human cost of the work? The most sustainable project is not worth a peep if it is based on the exploitation of those who are obliged to sell their sweat and blood in conditions miserables.El ELA union has indicated that in the construction of the 175 kilometers of the Basque Y there will be 6,000 people, 80% of them foreign and that there is a need for subcontractors that tighten their working conditions.

In 2011, the Basque Parliament adopted a document allowing trade unions to access the works of the TAV. ELA has since reported numerous cases of exploitation: In Arrasate, workers who worked 22 hours in a row were found; in Tolosa, the deceit of a transport company was uncovered; in Aramaio, Legorreta, Hernani and other places, it has been seen that the territorial pact of construction is not being complied with... In some cases there is a difference of EUR 18,000 between the remuneration that the worker should receive and that which he has actually received.

And where does the inspection look?

This misguided path against precariousness can be seen well with the case of the Sogeprovi subcontract. The explosion occurred in 2013, not in the TAV, but in the Tabakalera area. The Abertzale syndicate complained that the workers who were building the cultural centre of Donostia-San Sebastian were in very precarious conditions (500 extra hours a year, without vacation or extraordinary prizes, with salaries that did not reach 900 euros..). The Labour Inspectorate intervened and finally reached an agreement with the institutions and companies that support Tabakalera to change the situation and give what was owed to the workers.

At the same time, a few kilometres away, the subcontractor itself was building the TAV in Urnieta, often using Tabakalera workers, according to the current workload. Having also denounced this case, the response of the labour inspectorate reached almost a year, with hardly any hours or infringements. The document is signed by the same inspector who investigated the Tabakalera case. “The irregularities and conditions are the same, the same worker and the same company – ELA said in its complaint. We wonder if the APR has some sort of momentum.”

Raúl Resmella worked at two sites for Sogeproveni. At the end of the Tabakalera ones, they moved to the TAV tunnel in Urnieta, where he returned to “reality”: “When I started I was claustrophobic, I went home and thought, “Do I have to go back to the hole?” The noise of the trucks, the tears of gases in the eyes... He would leave his house around 6 o'clock and go back often at 9 o'clock in the evening, with his pants torn apart.

The inspector was aware of the situation of Resmella and others as a result of the events in Tabakalera. In 2015 he made a visit to the works: “That day I didn’t even get the data. What's your name? OK, bye.’ I don't know where I came from or what I was for... He just asked me about the earbuds, I told him that I had taken the snack to eat, how am I going to talk differently with my peers?”

The workers in Sogeproveni were unaware of the fate of the paid holidays. Mihai Cojocaru, like many others, was dismissed at Christmas – at the only interruption of the works – and was equally charged on those days, at his own request: “Don’t you get rid of the mortgage that month and how do you pay it with 700 euros?” Cojocaru is Romanian, when his father died he had to return to his village for a few days: they didn't pay him a day.

In view of all the evidence of abuse, the inspection eventually published the resolution: some workers did not take vacation in four years – and did not charge – and accumulated between 300 and 400 hours a year: “In the cases analyzed, the regulations are systematically violated,” the report states. However, for Igor San José, responsible for ALS in the construction of Gipuzkoa, these conclusions are “mistaken and not credible”, as the situation is much more serious and affects more workers.

The Employment Minister of the Basque Government, Ángel Toña, had to give explanations in the Basque Parliament about the too many jobs detected in the TAV. In its opinion, the department has made 103 visits to railway works: “No one turns a blind eye, let alone the labour inspectorate.”

Prefabricated caset of workers

What is said about the distant chairs is not worth four nuts when you put your feet in the mud. We do not need a hundred or two hundred visits, we only need one to check that the giant public works do not comply with the rule: “The extra hour pays us 7 euros and when they pay us,” explains an old man from the first moment, with his face decomposed by more than 40 years of work in construction. We are between Hernani and Astigarraga, we enter an improvised cement road to the underworld of the works of the TAV.

The workers of the company Encofrados y Puente de Castilla S.L., located in Salamanca, only recently paid half of what the Gipuzkoa construction agreement says. They are working for the cooperative Ulma de Arrasate, which supplies material for building bridges to the company or UTE Ergobia Hiru Lane (Moyua, Balzola and Azvi). It is therefore a subcontract.

We enter the prefabricated house where the workers eat and we know from their mouths how they are: they have no holiday or diet, they have no extra pay, they enter 10 hours a day, they have even stayed a few weekends working for 80 euros: “What we spend on meals,” says another, “Hey obligau! If you stay here,” says one of them before ending a can of Coca-Cola with a drink.

The large thermal bags are on the table, most of them come from Cáceres and spend the night in the shared homes of Hernani, while the day they do it on the pitch. Every week, they start early in the morning, and after traveling 700 kilometers in the dark, they start working without time to leave the bags at home. I'll need caffeine and sugar to spend the hours. “We laughed not to cry,” explains someone who has been in the company for 20 years. Many of us don't have a partner and we're here just to pay. Then you'll say there's a lot of work, yes, but at what price? Do I have to have black skin to be a slave?”

"Is that clear?" Inspection doesn’t do this, right?” asks Igor San José at the end. We have also been to some other part of the TAV's works in Gipuzkoa and we have also been able to see that the construction agreement is not being complied with, after having been with the workers of a company.

The situation of labor exploitation of the TAV in Hernani is explained in February in the blog Zuloan of ARGIA, thanks to research carried out in collaboration with the Manu Robles-Arangiz Institute. After that, the subcontract has acknowledged that the Gipuzkoa Convention, pressured by the evidence and testimonies presented by ELA, is not being complied with and has committed to do so.

As this Weekly has seen, the workers have seen their wages increased by 40% – the union is monitoring and wants the extra pay to be shared among the workers, as this would not be the first time the company has left. On the other hand, the workers have a custom smile, and the concern is noted: “It’s very clear to us: at the end of this, they will put the cross on us,” they say, desperate for the ghost of expulsion. At the moment, most drivers have been taken to the area of Aduna to perform the Anxiety viaduct between Zizurkil and Andoain, at least until they know if they will continue the work in Hernani. But that will be decided by the contracting companies of the UTE, which have the pan in their hand in the works of the TAV.

Concerns of the construction sector

In civil works, the TEU is constantly resorting to subcontracting, inter alia, to reduce costs. This practice has led to a total collapse of working conditions in the construction sector: “The peaks come because the Portuguese walk through Galicia and in Portugal the Brazilians go... there is always a lot of movement,” says San José.

The situation is bitter, even more so if we are aware that in all sections of the Basque Y project, at least one of the two or three companies that make up the UTE is a state multinational without own resources (see graph); all these sections of the TAV were awarded under the presidency of Patxi López.

Juanma Díaz is well aware of the different features of these companies: “My father said to me: ‘Go from there, let them take the popa!’ His father, the ferrallista, entered the construction following his path, after completing a higher degree. He worked in the section of the TAV of Aduna under very precarious conditions, until he sat on the ground with the UTE officials, tired of not paying him: “I told the sub-director of the work what I had to say and then they decided ‘this must be done or yes’.”

From the beginning, it was devoted almost exclusively to the work, contracted by a small engineering company. Díaz, who only charged 800 euros, used him as a “boy for everything”: “I also worked as assistant to the topographer, marking, without security conditions; when the storm erupted, we were like lightning in that dandruff – explains Errenteria’s one, pointing with hand the wandering passage in the area of the Anxibar River, towards Zizurkil. And that happened at the beginning of the work, once inside the tunnel, know…”.

Subcontracting and precariousness are often the causes of accidents at work. At least seven people have died in the works of the TAV over these years. And all that human cost in exchange for what? Or by asking the question differently: Would it be possible to build the TAV, at these prices and at those times, without labor exploitation?

We have come down the valley to chat with the leaders of the UTE Aduna that carries the Zizurkil-Andoain section, accompanied by members of ELA. We have told our colleagues in Cáceres that they need to work, their night trips and the risks that this entails: “But then it is not a question of safety standards – we are often told by the director of works – that they have strange customs.”