"Black lives matter in Barcelona" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

Unlike the UK or USA, one of the more visible ways that many Europeans are used to seeing black people is at work as street sellers, especially during summer in the bigger cities. These are the so-called ‘top manta’ who display their products on blankets in busy places.

In July three years ago, Barcelona’s ‘top manta’ vendors – virtually all of whom are of African descent – decided to set up their own website and clothing brand. Their aim was to turn an illegal activity into a more widely accepted one by “officially registering as a non-profit organisation/union.”

In a piece of good news, they recently finished the first round of their crowdfunding campaign to which almost 2,500 people donated (mainly in amounts of less than 50 euros) to reach their initial target.

(This entrepreneurial move predated the 2015 tragic death of a local man of Senegalese origin who fell from his third floor apartment balcony in Salou during a law enforcement raid. His family sued the police.)

The union collective says the business venture is part of a broader goal to improve their living conditions as marginalised people and because they “want an alternative to the fake products we dreamt we could take off the streets in our city.”

The association was formed by migrants from various African countries who have found a form of daily subsistence in street vending. They argue that they want to have legal employment and residence status but that has been denied them.

Under the slogan “Surviving is not a crime,” their collective had been founded as “a way to support [themselves] in the face of the harshness of selling in the street every day and as a way to defend [themselves] in the face of institutional racism, persecution and criminalisation.” They are also keen to remove the stigma around their jobs and emphasise that they are “creative individuals with ideas and ambition, [just] like you.”

Some members have talked about the dignity of their work even though many earn an income that barely reaches 200 euros a month.

A recent Barcelona council investigation found that, contrary to allegations, there was “no mafia” involvement in the supply of products to ’top manta’.

It is believed that there are organised groups involved in the trafficking of people who bring these immigrants to Spain and there are also “criminal bands” linked to counterfeit goods.

Partly due to pressure from several migrant collectives, in 2010 street vending was “de-penalised” in Spain and it became a minor infraction.

But again in 2015, a penal code reform, carried out by the conservative government of the People’s Party (PP), reestablished street vending as an offence with sanctions of between six months and two years jail.

Legal status of ‘top mantas’ aside, I am interested that these men and their families have an income that allows them a decent life that keeps each of them away from serious crime as a way of making ends meet financially.

Some other members of the public have expressed frustration that ‘top manta’ sellers take business away from established shops and businesses, as well as the complaint that they pay no tax and are selling goods manufactured by children in extreme poverty.

These strike me as probably valid points that need to be worked out, but on a European-wide basis rather than a national or local one. Overall though, we face the problem of what should (and can) be done when people are trapped in the kind of situation the ‘top mantas’ are.

Everyone has the basic right to a decent living. How governments and society deal with this is a huge question that tests how humane we really are.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2020. ]

More info on the Barcelona 'top mantas' here: https://en.goteo.org/project/top-manta-bcn

    

"The new nomads" -- Spain's young people

   "Spanish society has got an outstanding debt with its young people, who can’t construct a personal and professional life..., who don’t have decent jobs and salaries, don’t have adequate housing and can’t start a family.

The last decade has been witness to how the concept of “mileurista” [somebody earning 1,000 € a month] has passed from being derogatory to being an aspiration.

A recent study by [the trade union organization] Comisiones Obreras with the title “#GeneraciónMóvil” [mobile generation], shows the following: unstable and unpredictable personal and career paths, always conditioned by low salaries, unbearable rates of temporality and a rotation that turns the young into nomads in the labor market: from one sector to another, from salaried to self-employed, from victims of undesired partiality to false interns, with imposed stopovers in unemployment or abroad, without safe horizons nor the least capacity to plan life projects in the medium or long term, without security...

In 2017, 66 of every 100 young people had a temporary and/or part time contract; and still worse, 20 of every 100 salaried young suffered from double precariousness (temporary and part-time contract). Only 34 of every 100 had a fixed full-time contract...

Lastly, emancipation: 81% of the young between 20 and 24 years, 53% of those between 25 and 29, and 24% of those between 30 and 34 years still live with their parents. … leading to a lower birth rate, as they have their first child later or can’t afford to have children at all.

[…] many young people are deprived of the opportunities they should have had: the right to live their own life independently has been snatched away from them, to take their own choices, forcing them to accept, in the best of cases, any job, to work at any price, to study what the job market dictates to them and not that for which they had a vocation, or to return again and again to their family’s home, hiding their frustration."

SOURCE: Joaquín Estefanía's article: “Ideas,” El País, Dec. 30, 2018, p. 8 [printed edition] (Originally found as excerpts here at LITERARY RAMBLES blog.)

"Macron’s Gift to the Rich"

"Surprise, surprise: Emmanuel Macron's first budget slashes taxes on wealth and guts social spending...

Anyone with lingering doubts about whether the moniker “President of the Rich” fits France’s Emmanuel Macron could safely put them to rest this month, upon publication of his first budget since taking office.

Last week the National Assembly, dominated by Macron’s En Marche party, approved a reform package overwhelmingly weighted toward elite interests. Its €7 billion of tax cuts included reducing France’s wealth tax, long a bête noire for the country’s right wing, by 70 percent and subjecting capital gains tax to a new flat rate of 30 percent.

Tellingly, the Ministry for the Economy and Finance withheld its own research on the impact of the reforms before the vote in the Assembly. But, by Thursday, they had fallen into the possession of the Socialist chair of the Senate Finance Commission and were released. Under the capital gains reforms, France’s wealthiest 100 taxpayers will earn an additional €582,380 per year on average. The top 1,000 will each get a modest €172,220. The rest of the country, on the other hand, can expect little to nothing. Forty-four percent of the total benefits will flow to the top 1 percent.

While the ministry said it could not precisely calculate the financial effects of slashing the wealth tax, Senate Finance Commission estimates placed the gains for the country’s top 100 taxpayers at an average of €1 million. These are people with last names like Peugeot and Rothschild; heads of telecom giants, weapons manufacturers, and luxury brands.

But the tax cuts were only the opening salvo of a budget that forms part of Macron’s sweeping plans to liberalize the French economy and in his own words, “celebrate those who succeed.” After the passage of business-friendly labor reforms and the introduction of plans to rein in unemployment benefits this fall, next up for debate this week are roughly €11.6 billion worth of spending cuts aimed at trimming the country’s social safety net.

The double standard is glaring. Just as the government prepares to fork over millions from state coffers to the ultra-rich, it tells the general population it must tighten the strings on public spending. Its budget will include measures such as a €1.7 billion cut in housing aid as well as the elimination of 120,000 state-funded short-term job contracts. Votes on these measures are slated for the coming weeks, with the Assembly wrapping up its work in late November.

Parliamentarians will begin by tackling the Social Security budget. Here, too, the wealthiest will stand to gain. En Marche deputies have proposed lowering employers’ Social Security taxes from 30 percent to 20 percent on bonus shares offered to employees. That might seem like an arcane measure, but it has symbolic value. The reform previously passed in 2015, championed by then-minister Macron. Legislators repealed it the following year following a public outcry over booming CEO compensation tied to stock options. For Macron’s commanding parliamentary majority, concerns like these appear to be old news.

Opinion polls suggest otherwise. Macron’s popularity has already fallen below that of historically unpopular predecessor François Hollande during the same period of his presidency. An Odoxa poll released after the budget measures found that 88 percent of French people thought they would benefit the richest. Meanwhile, Macron’s approval rating with pollster Ifop continued to drop in October, sliding a further three points to 42 percent.

The president’s approval among investment bankers appears much higher and steadier. The evening after the National Assembly passed his tax cuts, Macron dined with executives from twenty-one of the world’s leading funds in the Elysée Palace’s winter garden. They came away pleased. “Yesterday’s session was beneficial to the investors present,” said a spokesperson for Blackrock, which manages around €5.5 trillion, “and reinforced the view that the opportunities in France are the strongest they’ve been in two decades.”

Meanwhile, meaningful political opposition remains alarmingly limited. En Marche is in firm control of the National Assembly. The right-wing Republican opposition may crib about minor details, but it largely supports the budgetary reforms. The far-right National Front and center-left Socialist Party, both reeling from internal turmoil, formally opposed the tax cuts — but made little impact. As is the case for most parliamentary issues, the most vocal and sustained criticism of the budget came from the left-wing France Insoumise grouping headed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

But the Left has not managed to raise mass popular opposition to Macron’s measures and the street remains quiet. Union-backed demonstrations against labor-law reform have drawn hundreds of thousands of protesters but failed to make much impact. And in spite of a one-day, public-sector strike and a well-attended France Insoumise march in Paris in late September, a more unified social movement has yet to emerge.

Still, left-wing opponents of the government may have reason for optimism. On November 16, unions are calling for another round of nationwide protests. Unlike the three previous days of demonstrations against labor-law reform, the upcoming protest counts the support of Force Ouvrière, France’s third-largest labor confederation, and aims to oppose Macron’s economic policy at large."

Read more from source (Jacobin) here.

"Left-wing intellectuals of Europe: take on the challenge" says José "Pepe" Mujica

The most recent former President of Uruguay has published an article arguing that "European intellectuals must take the responsibility to change their social model before it turns into a catastrophe.

The trade union movement, the ideas of socialism, anarchism and communism, and all of the ideas of progress: all have their roots in Europe. It is in your continent that the first great popular movements – the main drivers of social change – emerged."

Read more here.

Spain’s striking coalminers

A new global union named  IndustriALL has begun their first online campaign, aiming to pressure the Spanish government to negotiate with coal miners who have been on strike, and occupying their mines, for several weeks now.

George Orwell wrote the most compelling account of life down the mine that I have ever read and the Chilean miners disaster and subsequent rescue in October 2010 taught us about the grim reality of the working life of underground miners.

General strike called for March 29

Ignacio Fernández Toxo, Secretary of the 1.1 million member CCOO Trade Union today announced a nation-wide General Strike to be held on March 29 [M-29] this year.




Under the slogans "No to labour reform, defend public services" and "They want to finish off everyone's labor and social rights" the union is arguing that the Spanish government's response to the current economic crisis across Europe is too harsh on working people and is doing nothing for the unemployed either.

Catalunya protests labour law "reform"

Tommorrow (this Sunday) February 19, two of Catalunya’s trade unions, the CCOO and the UGT have arranged a number of demonstrations across the region to protest against planned reform to the country’s labour laws. These changes would see a further weakening of pay and conditions for millions of working people.

Under the slogan, "No to labour reform! Injustice to workers! Inefficient for the economy…” the protests will take place in…

- Barcelona: 12 midday at Passeig de Gràcia - Avinguda Diagonal
- Tarragona: 12 midday at l'Estàtua dels Despullats (Rambla Nova)
- Lleida: 12 midday at la Plaça Ricard Viñes
- Girona: 12 midday at Plaça de la Independència
- Tortosa, 12 midday at la Plaça del Carrilet

For more details see the link to their blog here.

Can migrants save the trade unions?

Olle Sahlström looks at trade unions in Catalonia, Spain and across the continent and writes in Eurozine:

“The trade union is at a crossroad. Immigrant workers must be included in the unions. Either one chooses to try classic methods of organization, or entirely new directions which risk a widening of the gap between the white, male worker aristocracy and the poor, exploited migrant worker.”