1. Introduction
Global chains structure agri-food production under the control of
large distribution groups that must coordinate highly diverse local
contexts with a wide variety of actors (Gereffi et al., 2005).
In recent decades, quality standards have become the form of corporate
governance of the chains. Standardization establishes indirect control
(Gibbon et al., 2008) by creating a set of rules that all
actors must follow, thereby shaping and regulating the work, both in
terms of production and harvesting in the fields and of processing in
warehouses. In this globalization of the agri-food system, warehouses, a
historically feminized space, acquire greater relevance as a node for
managing quality and integrating the activity of the different actors in
the chain (Busch and Bain, 2004; Gadea et al., 2021). Although
we have extensive literature on quality standards, the consequences of
their application for workers remain a relatively little addressed topic
(Selwyn, 2012; Castro et al., 2017). This article addresses
work in globalized warehouses in Ribera del Xúquer, Spain, during the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Ribera del Xúquer has been a citrus export area since the mid-19th
century, and is representative of other agro-exporting areas of the
Valencian Community, and now fully integrated into global agri-food chains. In Ribera del Xúquer,
the vast majority of the workers in the warehouses are native women,
although in recent years the presence of immigrant women has increased,
as in other Spanish agro-exporting areas.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the agri-food sector was declared
strategic by the Spanish government and its workers were considered
essential workers. Unlike other areas of the agri-food chains, basically
in the global South (Clapp and Moseley, 2020), activity was maintained
in Ribera del Xúquer, as in other Spanish agro-exporting areas (Pedreño,
2020; Güell and Garcés-Mascareñas, 2020). In the warehouses, measures
were adopted to maintain the activity and minimize the sanitary risk. In
this context, the workers adopted various strategies to cope with the
situation, strategies that go beyond the workplace. On the one hand,
their work is essential to guarantee the supply of fruit in the proper
quality conditions. On the other hand, the new situation and the gender
ideology has imposed on them, as it has on the vast majority of women
(Eurofond 2020; Petts et al., 2021), greater requirements of
attention, care and responsibility for their home and families.
This article discuss work in the fruit warehouses of Ribera del
Xúquer, a feminized space organized according to quality standards,
during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article has three
objectives. First, to learn about the measures adopted in the
organization of work as a consequence of the pandemic and its effects on
female workers. Second, to understand the experiences of women workers
and the strategies they have developed to adapt to the new situation,
both at work and at home. Third, to understand whether the pandemic
situation generates differences among women workers and to identify the
main factors, both occupational and social, that explain these
differences.
Below, after presenting the analytic framework of the article and
describing the methodology used, we offer an analysis of the situation
of the fruit warehouses in Ribera del Xúquer, before the COVID-19. Then,
the findings are presented analyzing the measures taken in the
organization of work, their consequences for women workers and the
strategies they have developed. The final section reviews these findings
together and draws conclusions.
2.
Analytic framework. Global agri-food warehouses, female workers and
pandemic
Global agri-food production is structured in chains in which large
distribution groups hold the dominant position and control the process
indirectly (Gereffi, 1994). Coordinating dispersed production zones,
with diverse local contexts and actors, is a very complex and central
task (Gereffi et al., 2005). In this context, quality has
become a formula for corporate governance, a competitive advantage over
other producers and/or marketers and a mechanism that increases the
power of large-scale distribution. Quality standards constitute a model
of corporate governance (Ponte et al. 2011), a form of indirect
control that acts through standardization (Gibbon et al.,
2008). At the same time, these general trends are differentiated
according to their embeddedness in each local area (Coe and Yeung,
2015), the relationships that are established with local stakeholders,
including local and national institutions (Selwyn, 2012) and the
historicity of each place.
This globalization of the agri-food system makes warehouses
strategically important. Nowadays, in addition to their traditional work
of handling and packaging, warehouses also undertake the tasks derived
from quality management, in a double sense. Firstly, their work process
must conform to quality standards (Bonanno and Cavalcanti, 2012; Castro
et al., 2017). Secondly, given its intermediate position
between the different agents in the chain, the warehouse has acquired a
leading role in the application of quality standards and other
requirements of large distributors (Busch and Bain, 2004), and in the
growing integration of the activity of the different actors (Gadea
et al., 2021).
Although warehouse work has been mechanized and technified, it
continues to require a significant intensive mobilization of seasonal
labour. Historically, fruit and vegetable warehouses have been a
feminine and devalued work space, adjusted to the conditions of
seasonality, hourly availability and wage moderation justified by their
social consideration as family help and/or supplementary income (Lara,
1998; Castro et al., 2020). With agri-food chains, this type of
work organization, based on feminization, precariousness and sexual
segmentation of work, is maintained by updating its features, both in
Latin America (Lee, 2010; Figueroa, 2015), and in Spain, with a growing
presence of immigrant women (Castro et al., 2020; Gadea et
al., 2021). This organization of work constitutes one of the keys
to the functioning of the system and requires labour costs to be
contained in order to maintain profitability, despite the new quality
requirements demanded. In addition to reducing costs, feminist political
economy theory analyzes this feminization of labour as another facet of
the new political economy of gender (Allen and Sachs, 2012; Figueroa,
2015), which naturalizes the social hierarchies of the local context, in
terms of class, gender and ethnicity (Anthias, 2012), to the benefit of
companies and employers. Also from an intersectional perspective,
feminist organizational studies have emphasized the interrelationship
between gender inequalities in companies and gender, class and ethnic
inequalities in the social context in which a company is embedded
(Acker, 2011; Holvino, 2010). The authors argue that the unequal
organizational practices of companies are only possible because of the
inequalities present in the social context. At the same time, these
organizational practices tend to reproduce these inequalities and
devalue the work performed by people in the most precarious situations.
The devaluation of women’s work does not only mean that it is underpaid,
it is a social process that denies these workers their social value
(Castro et al., 2020).
This situation in the warehouses became more significant and complex
with the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation generated by the pandemic has
not meant a break with neoliberalism, but rather a global event that
reveals its contradictions (Grasso et al., 2021; Stevano et
al., 2021; Mezzadri, 2022). Most Western states, including Spain,
responded to the pandemic by applying Keynesian measures to sustain the
business sector, employment and a minimum income to a confined
population, with other typically neoliberal measures to ensure the
profits of large companies (Zanoni and Mir, 2022), as shown by the
refusal to liberalize vaccines (Paiva and Miguel, 2020). This set of
measures has led to a reorganization of productive and reproductive
work, reinforcing pre-existing inequalities (Dobusch and Kreissl, 2020;
Grasso et al., 2021) or generating new inequalities at various
levels.
From the perspective of Social Reproduction Theory, the pandemic
constitutes a crisis of the neoliberal social reproduction regime
(Mezzadri, 2022), which is based on individual responsibility and cuts
in social spending, such as education and health (Fraser, 2017).
Likewise, COVID-19 has deconstructed the false dichotomy that separates
productive and reproductive work. More generally, the pandemic has
revealed the radical interdependence that exists among people in all
spheres of social life (Dobusch and Kreissl, 2020; Grasso et
al., 2021), which until now had been veiled by neoliberal
individualism. However, this interdependence does not imply social
harmony (Butler, 2015) and is based on the inequalities of the social
system.
While at first it seemed that COVID-19 affected everyone, early data
and research soon showed the different impact according to age, social
class, gender and ethnocultural background. In Germany, Austria and
Spain, members of the working classes report higher levels of economic
and health risk, both for general economic impacts and for their type of
work, mobility and living conditions (Holst et al., 2021;
Dobusch and Kreissl, 2020; Bernardi and Gil-Hernandez, 2021). Other
substantial differences are established by gender. Research in Germany,
Italy, and the USA shows that women suffered more from the economic
shock (Kulic et al., 2021; Collins et al., 2021). At
the same time, among European and American women there was a clear
increase in domestic and care work (Eurofound, 2020; Moreno-Colom et
al., 2023; Petts et al., 2021). Without being exhaustive,
the different ethnocultural background also establishes clear
differences. In pandemic, the living conditions and quality of life of
immigrants in Great Britain, Germany and Spain worsened significantly
more than those of natives (Shen and Bartram, 2021; Soiné et
al., 2021; FOESSA, 2022).
3. Research methods and design
This text is based on the results of two periods of fieldwork. The
first, between October 2018 and February 2020, was focused on examining
how work is organized under quality governance and its implications for
women workers. The pandemic interrupted our work and made us broaden our
objectives, to learn about the impacts of COVID-19 on the working and
living conditions of some women workers who were declared essential.
With these objectives in mind, the second period of fieldwork took place
between February and May 2021.
In both periods, semi-structured individual and group interviews were
the main technique used, although observation was also carried out. In
the first period of fieldwork, 29 key informants were interviewed
(workers, crew chiefs and warehouse managers, quality technicians, union
members and labour inspectors). Thanks to the contacts established in
the area, another 26 people with similar key informant profiles were
interviewed during the pandemic (table 1). To determine the profiles,
typological sampling and theoretical sampling were combined to achieve a
structural representativeness (Mejía, 2000; Flick, 2014) of the
productive organization. Other criteria were gender and nationality,
given that the work organization is sexually and ethnically
segmented.
Table 1. Profile of the interviews
|
October 2018 to
February 2020 |
February to May
2021 |
| Field workers |
Male |
12 |
9 |
| Female |
1 |
1 |
| Warehouse workers |
Male |
0 |
0 |
| Female |
7 |
8 |
| Warehouse managers |
Male |
0 |
0 |
| Female |
1 |
2 |
| Quality technicians |
Male |
3 |
1 |
| Female |
1 |
3 |
| Union workers |
Male |
1 |
0 |
|
Female |
1 |
1 |
| Labour inspectors |
Male |
1 |
1 |
|
Female |
1 |
0 |
| Total |
|
29 |
26 |
Source: the authors.
Our first contacts were through the workers’ unions, which we then
were complemented using the snowball method (Biernacki y Waldorf, 1981;
Mejía, 2000) to recruit representative informants of each profile. The
number of interviews was established by saturation (Alonso, 1998; Flick,
2014), when interviewees’ speeches began to repeat. In total, 55 people
were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed from a
socio-hermeneutic perspective (Alonso, 1998, Fairclough, 2010), in which
the discourses of the actors are interpreted taking into consideration
their social context, their interests, the ideas and representations
that are mobilized and the specific historicity of each place. We also
worked with the 2020 Agricultural Census and data from LABORA (Valencian
Office of Occupancy and Training).
4.
Ribera del Xúquer female warehouse workers under quality governance
Ribera del Xúquer is a natural and historical area, shaped by the
river Xúquer, with 1255.31 km, in the province of
Valencia. Since the mid-19th century, Ribera del Xúquer specialized in
the cultivation of citrus fruits for export European market. One and a
half centuries later, fruit growing continues to have economic and
social importance. Ribera del Xúquer is representative of other
Valencian citrus-growing areas. These are traditionally agro-exporting
coastal areas, with an economic structure centered on services, a
significant industry and smallholder fruit farming, an important number
of cooperatives, and fully integrated into global agri-food chains
(Bono, 2010; Noguera, 2010). These Valencian areas show similar trends
to other Spanish agro-exporting areas (Etxezarreta et al.,
2015). In addition to their subordinate inclusion in agri-food chains,
they share a common structural recourse to immigrant labour and the
growing flexibility and precariousness of labour. In the Valencian
fruit-growing areas, these trends manifests in a highly differentiated
way, depending on the work space. In the countryside, immigrant workers
constitute the fundamental labour force with an increasing use of
temporary employment agencies and the different forms of flexibility
made possible by the 2012 labour reform (Torres y Pérez,
2021)2. In contrast, the vast majority of warehouse workers
are native women.
Warehouses emerged at the end of the 19th century as a feminized
space. These female warehouse workers were working class women, with no
other work alternatives. Historically, their work has been considered a
help or complement to the family income which, given the gender
representation, has undervalued their productive function and veiled the
training and skills required (Domingo and Viruela, 1997; Candela and
Piñón, 2005).
At present, the traditional sexual division of labour remains: around
80 per cent of warehouse workers are women. Despite social changes that
has resulted in more women working as managers and quality technicians,
the traditional legitimization of the sexual division of labour, based
on the delicacy attributed to women and strength to men, continues.
The Board has always been men, the manager has always been a man...
although later the salesmen have been men and women (in the warehouse)
the delicate part, of preparing orders, has always been women... the man
carries a lot of weight (EI15).
The warehouse workers are women with little training and few labour
alternatives. As in other Valencian citrus-growing areas (Candela and
Piñon, 2005), there are three profiles of workers: older women with long
working careers, although discontinuous due to childcare; middle-aged
women, married with children, who continue to work; and a third group of
young, single women. The vast majority are native women, but in the last
decade the presence of immigrant workers has increased. In some cases,
they are immigrant women who live with their families in one of the
municipalities of the area, often for years. In other cases, they are
workers recruited by temporary agencies and who usually live in the
Metropolitan Area of Valencia, from where they commute daily to
work.
The quality standards implemented in the warehouse have standardized
work processes, exacerbating two pre-existing trends. On the one hand,
greater professionalization, mechanization and standardization of work
processes; on the other hand, an increase in the pace of work and stress
for the workers. According to our interviewees, the application of
quality standards has had an impact on product
quality, but has not improved their working conditions.
Quality standards and special orders, with specific customer
specifications, require the workers to pay greater attention and care in
the selection and packaging of the fruit without being given more time.
Similar to the table grape workers in Murcia (Castro et al.,
2017), our interviewees point out that the pace of work, their fear of
making mistakes and the constant pressure generates stress for them and,
sometimes, a bad working environment. One manager illustrates this with
the case of an order that requires a piece-by-piece selection, while
another order is being prepared for a “less demanding customer”.
For Marks & Spencer we do quite a lot. The preparation takes a
lot of time, it occupies the workers for a long time, you have to look
at (the orange), it’s good for here (Marks & Spencer), it’s good for
there (another customer), and the manager says: work fast. I had to keep
saying it... And they’ve called me a pest, what a pain in the neck,
they’ve called me everything (female warehouse manager, Spanish,
EI11).
Another problem is the increasing number of just-in-time orders from
large distributors, which must be delivered within one or two days.
These demands can only be met by large warehouses with two shifts. In
the case of small and medium-sized warehouses, just in time means that
many workers do not have a clear schedule.
It (just in time) has completely changed how we work and directly
affects people’s lives. It affects their salaries, their schedules and
the reconciliation of work and family life... That is the fight we have
with the companies... It makes no sense that they call you at 10 p.m. to
tell you that you come at 5 a.m. the next day and that happens (female
warehouse worker, trade unionist, EI18).
The organization of work to meet just-in-time orders degrades the
conditions of many workers, makes it impossible to reconcile family and
social life and, as the trade unionist points out, leaves “people at the
expense of what the large supermarkets want” (EI18).
In the warehouses of Ribera del Xúquer, compared to the fields
(Torres y Pérez, 2021), there is greater compliance with the collective
bargaining agreement. In addition to working hours, wages and other
aspects, the agreement regulates the types of contracts,
temporary and permanent-discontinuous, and the change from the
first type to the second, which offers greater protection, security and
recognition of seniority. The average salary is 1,200 euros net for 40
hours per week, which can be increased by seniority in the company. The
fact that the agreement is complied with does not mean that there are no
irregularities. According to all of our interviewees, it is the
temporary agency workers who have the worst working conditions. Their
real salary is lower than that of warehouse workers, all the hours they
work are paid as ordinary hours, even if it is on weekends or at night,
and they must be permanently available.
Although they are all women workers, in the warehouses we find a
segmentation where type of contract, ethnic origin and social insertion
seem to feedback on each other. We have women workers with
permanent-discontinuous contracts, with better conditions, mostly
Spanish, and immigrant women, with years of residence and inserted in
the local social networks. The workers with temporary contracts, Spanish
and immigrant women, have a more unstable position. The most precarious
situation is that of temporary agency workers, the vast majority of whom
are immigrants and who tend to live outside the area. Our women workers
faced the pandemic with relatively different labour and social
situations.
5. Female
warehouse workers as essential workers
Similar to other European governments (Grasso et al., 2021),
the Spanish government ordered a general confinement of the population
from March 14 until June 7, 2020. In addition, measures such as the use
of masks, maintaining physical distance, frequent disinfection and
limitations to shared transportation were adopted. Likewise, essential
sectors and workers were established to guarantee basic services and
supplies for the population. With the exception of healthcare workers,
these essential workers occupied low-skilled jobs, without the
possibility of teleworking, in sectors such as agriculture,
transportation, care and food establishments and pharmacies (Bernardi y
Gil-Hernández, 2021).
5.1.
Measures in the work’s organization and consequences for women
workers
Warehouse workers were declared essential workers and the warehouses
of Ribera del Xúquer maintained their activity. Although special
measures were mandated, the same just-in-time work organization, high
work rates and strict compliance with quality standards were maintained,
with negative consequences for the workers.
During the first month of the pandemic, measures were improvised in
warehouses in an attempt to implement the general guidelines of the
health authorities. As early as May 2020, the Labour Inspectorate
established a protocol of measures for work environments, later modified
according to governmental guidelines. These protocols have been applied
across the board in fruit warehouses, albeit with multiple ad hoc
adaptations. In addition to general measures for the entire population,
the prevention measures adopted in warehouses affect the facilities, the
organization of working times, the place and process of work, as well as
the behaviours and routines of female workers.
In the facilities, measures have been adopted to facilitate social
distance between workers and mobility flows. The canteens have been
enlarged, with open windows, the lockers have been redistributed and
dispersed in different parts of the building, one-way directions for
moving around have been established, and the capacity of the toilets has
been limited, etc. The measures implemented create new routines for the
workers. For example, access to the warehouse has been modified, with
disinfection of shoes and temperature check. Hydroalcoholic gel and
bleach are available at the various work stations for individual and
space self-disinfection. There are warehouses where a manager goes
through the different sections dispensing hydroalcoholic gel in order to
keep up the pace of work.
My job was to pass out gel to the women. Those gloves are all black
from (the fruit) from the fields [...] You can’t stop for the worker to
clean her hands, no, apply gel and continue [...] Okay? That’s every
hour or every hour and a half. (Spanish, female warehouse manager
EI22).
In addition to the use of masks, constant disinfection, schedule
adjustments, etc., other measures have affected the workplace. In the
processing and packaging lines, for example, distances have been
increased, where possible, and rigid plastic curtains have been
installed to separate workers from each other. However, these separators
make it difficult for workers to move around and slow down the pace of
work. In order to keep up with the pace of the line, workers have to
move the curtains or work without keeping their distance. This happens
in particular in the processing of special orders, with more triage and
packaging work, as exemplified by the following quote:
(the plastic separator)... You may have seen some little baskets of
six or five khakis on the line, when the khakis fall, they fall all over
the place. That if you don’t hurry that’s not done... then, they always
put one or two girls (reinforcements). But sometimes there comes a time
when you were there, side by side. And I don’t know, there were some
infections, we didn’t get infected, but there were some girls who did
(Argentinean, female warehouse worker, EI23).
In mid-2020, in order to reduce the risk of infections, it was
recommended to create bubble groups in different work areas. This has
been put into practice unevenly. The permanent groups of women workers
have been created in the warehouses of large companies and cooperatives.
This is not the case in smaller warehouses where it is not feasible to
maintain stable and closed groups and respond just in time to the
requirements of large distributors. In addition, during periods of
greater demand, many workers work overtime or double shifts, which means
working with people they do not usually work with, which is perceived as
a situation of greater risk. The women workers organized in stable
groups have been, for the most part, permanent-discontinuous workers
and, to a lesser extent, temporary workers in department stores. If the
criterion of the bubble groups is to minimize risk, the workers in
temporary employment agencies, the vast majority of whom are immigrants,
accumulate the maximum number of contacts and therefore the highest
risk.
With the pandemic and the measures taken, travel to the warehouse
became a new problem for women workers. The warehouses are located in
industrial parks and transportation is necessary. In the past, workers
in the same municipality or area organized themselves to share cars and
reduce costs. With the pandemic and restrictive measures adopted, this
was no longer possible or is very limited. The problem of transport was
ignored by the vast majority of companies so it relapses on the workers.
The measures adopted in the organization of work were aimed at
maintaining production and adequate sanitary conditions for the workers.
While the first objective was achieved, the same cannot be said of the
second. Since the same work organization was maintained, some of the
measures adopted were not applied in practice due to the pressure of
just-in-time, such as plastic separators on the production line or
maintaining “bubble groups”.
5.2. The strategies
of female warehouse workers
Warehouse workers managed the pandemic situation with a variety of
strategies depending on their socioeconomic status, family situation,
social relationships and other factors. Some female warehouse workers
decided to stop working for fear of becoming infected, so as not to put
other members of their family at risk, and because they were in a
position to do so. Their family unit had the financial capacity to allow
them to lose that income. One of our interviewees commented that she
started the 2020-21 campaign earlier because of the resignation of the
more veteran workers:
Last year (2020), in March-April, I was one of the first ones they
called because workers with the most seniority in the cooperative, being
older and more at risk, did not want to. They were very afraid, better
your life than work. Although I need work to live... I was afraid but
with my family’s financial situation at that time I could not refuse
(female warehouse worker, Moroccan, EI38).
Like our interviewee, the salary of the vast majority of women
workers is basic to their family budget, especially during the pandemic.
In many working families in the area, during the confinement and a good
part of the year 2020, the wife’s salary compensated for the husband’s
unemployment, given the paralysis of other economic sectors. The vast
majority of women workers continued their activity, developing a variety
of strategies to minimize risks and “not to take the virus home”, as
pointed out in almost all the interviews. These strategies affect
various aspects of work in the warehouse, the management of the close
contact situation or the displacement of the workers.
One of these strategies concerned masks, their type and use in
different situations. After the first month of improvisation, the
companies provided the workers with cloth masks. Many of them bought and
used FFP2 masks, considered to be safer, which entailed an extra
expense. The company mask was used more when working with their usual
group, the FFP2 mask when it was considered that there could be more
risk, when working with non-habitual colleagues, shift changes or
overtime.
Another relevant issue has been the management of confinements.
During the first months, sick leave was granted to the person infected
by COVID-19 and to workers who were close contacts. Later, in October
2020, the criteria were modified. Workers who had been close contacts of
a person infected with COVID-19 had to stay at home and confirm their
health status by PCR. If the PCR result was positive, a worker was
granted sick leave from the day she stopped working; if the PCR result
was negative, she could return to work, but without being paid for the
days she had been at home. Given the situation of overcrowding in public
health centers, it could take several days to get a PCR. In most cases,
it has been the workers who have borne the costs of the diagnostic
tests. There have been many situations in which the tension between
minimizing the health risk and the financial cost for the worker has
been evident. Some workers complied, as a precaution, with strict
confinement. Other workers paid for a private PCR test in order to
obtain an immediate diagnosis and reduce the number of days at home
without pay. Other workers continued their activity, without undergoing
any tests, because they had no symptoms and could not afford to lose
their daily wages.
This Winter (2020) everything happened. Those who wanted to take the
test immediately called the health center and said: I was having lunch
with that worker and she tested positive... and some said: we were in
the car with masks on, windows open, I can’t lose my salary. There the
company did not control, and they went back to work (female warehouse
manager, Spanish, EI22).
Another problem to solve was commuting. Women workers have had to
adapt and deploy various travel strategies according to their
socio-economic level, degree of social relations and municipality of
residence. When possible, they have opted for the individual use of
their own car, to be transported by a family member or, for short
distances, to travel by bicycle or scooter. At other times, they have
continued to share a car, adjusting to the rules of each period. Often
for financial reasons, to reduce costs, but also for social relations
and solidarity, as exemplified by this quote.
When she went together (by car), you could only take one person, she
had to get in the back and when she got out you had to disinfect it. So
the solution? Better not to take anyone. But if somebody asks you… I
won’t leave a coworker stranded (without transportation) (female
warehouse manager, Spanish, EI22).
Workers who do not have their own vehicle, who live in a municipality
other than where the warehouse is located, and have few relationships
among their coworkers, have had problems in ensuring their daily
commute. Using public transport is not always possible or takes much
longer. These situations affect more the temporary workers and, above
all, the temporary agency workers. In these cases, these workers had to
use temporary employment agencies vans, which, according to various
testimonies, did not comply with the passenger limitation measures.
These work strategies have been tried to combine with family
strategies. The pandemic has exacerbated the difficulties in reconciling
work and family life, particularly for female workers who were in charge
of dependents (Eurofound, 2020; Petts et al., 2021).
In addition, the “family-oriented” Spanish welfare state has
traditionally delegated the care of the elderly and minors to women. In
one of the group interviews, conducted in April 2021, women workers
highlighted the difficulties in reconciling work and family given the
long working hours, the physical and psychological exhaustion and the
changes in schedules due to just-in-time.
Conciliation (work-family), there isn’t any.
You have all the rights, for maternity leave, for elderly
parents... if you can take these reductions (of work and salary). I have
to work 14 hours and there is no conciliation.
You end up exhausted... from lack of sleep, physical and
mental fatigue. There are times when I get home and tell my daughter not
to turn on the TV. All day long the noise of machines, of people... I
want silence (EG39).
During the pandemic, this situation “has been the same” (EG39),
although with less family and neighbourhood support in order to avoid
contagion; for months the care of children by their grandparents has not
been possible. During confinement, in cases where the husband did not
work, he took care of the children. This assistance did not free women
workers from domestic worries and chores. In the first months, with a
lot of insecurity and little information, all the women interviewed
reported daily dedication to disinfecting work clothes, taking extreme
measures of personal hygiene and also those at home. Later, from
September 2020 onwards, the progressive normalization of economic
activity and the incorporation of husbands to work in non-essential
sectors reduced their domestic support. Faced with this situation, there
have been a variety of situations: those who have been able to find
support among their family and social relations; those who have had to
hire another woman to care for their relatives; or those who, unable to
solve their family responsibilities, have requested a one-year leave of
absence without pay, a possible option for permanent-discontinuous
employees.
5.3. Pandemic
situation increases inequalities
As in other social spheres (Grasso et al., 2021; Bernardi
and Gil-Hernández, 2021), the pandemic has increased inequalities
between workers and between territories. Before the pandemic, the
warehouses of Ribera del Xúquer already had a segmented structure in
which the type of contract, ethnic origin and social insertion in the
area, established differences between some workers and others. The
pandemic, the measures adopted and the continuity of the same work
organization have increased the labour and social differences between
workers. A good indicator is the strategies used to minimize risks.
Only permanent-discontinuous workers, Spanish and immigrants who have
been residing in La Ribera for many years, have been able to choose a
fixed work shift and a bubble group. Although they are all working
class, their ability to manage working times, invest more in prevention
(FFP2 masks, private PCR tests) or respect quarantine times if close
contacts are infected with COVID has depended on their economic
situation. As in other Spanish agro-exporting areas (Pedreño, 2020;
Güell and Garcés-Mascareñas, 2020), given the social situation of female
workers, many of them have not had these options, the majority of whom
are immigrants. Another factor that has increased differences during the
pandemic has been the extensiveness and diversity of social relations.
Both Spanish and immigrant workers with roots in the municipalities of
La Ribera have been able to draw from the basic resource of relatives,
neighbours and friends to help reconcile work and family
responsibilities. However, immigrant workers from temporary agencies in
more precarious social situations have not had this support, or it has
been more limited. These inequalities at work, as highlighted by Acker
(2011) and Holvino (2010), correlate with social inequalities in terms
of health risk, precariousness and living conditions. In pandemic, the
two types of inequalities have fed back on each other. In Ribera del
Xúquer, like other Spanish agro-exporting areas such as Murcia (Castro
et al., 2023), immigrant workers have suffered a greater
negative impact of the COVID 19 pandemic at work and social level, as it
has also been the case in other European countries, such as the Nordic
countries (Kuns et al., 2023).
In our interviews, we asked the women workers about their experience
of being essential workers. They consider that their work has been
essential but that it is not valued or socially recognized. They are
well aware that without their work there would be no fruit in the
market, a work that was more intense in the 2020-2021 season due to the
significant demand for citrus. However, they say, this has not been
translated into gestures of recognition. It is true that the managers of
some warehouses have sent letters, videos and messages of thanks to the
staff. Although in the vast majority of companies, as one of our
interviewees pointed out, “we have not been compensated financially”
(female warehouse worker, Spanish, EG39).
The pandemic also establishes differences between territories, in our
case between the Spanish agro-exporting areas. There have been multiple
cases of COVID-19 among female warehouse workers in Ribera del Xúquer,
particularly during the second wave (September-December 2020),
coinciding with a high incidence in this area and in the Metropolitan
Area of Valencia. Although several interviewees emphasize the importance
of socially-caused infections, it is not possible to distinguish one
social sphere from the other. In the fields and warehouses of Ribera del
Xúquer, or other Valencian agro-export areas,
there have not been major outbreaks limited to agro-industrial activity,
but rather a community spread of COVID-19, unlike agro-exporting areas
of Lleida, Huesca, Zaragoza and Murcia (Pedreño, 2020; Güell and
Garcés-Mascareñas, 2020), with a much greater use of immigrants who
carry out the agricultural circuit, high incidence of overcrowding and
poor living conditions. In these circumstances, the recognition of
migrant workers as essential workers meant that, at the same time, they
were a risk and a source of public alarm (Pedreño et al.,
2022).
In these areas, municipalities were again confined and in some cases
production was stopped, with great repercussions in the Spanish mass
media in 2020. Since we do not have disaggregated COVID-19 figures, it
is difficult to say in which areas there have been more infections.
Another issue is the different consequences in some areas and others.
Although the organization of work is very similar in agro-exporting
areas, the health risks varied depending on the type of workers, their
degree of labour and social precariousness, and their living
conditions.
6. Conclusions
The COVID-19 pandemic has had and continues to have serious
repercussions for society as a whole, with differences according to
social spheres and groups. Along with the measures of confinement and
limits to social interaction, the agri-food industry continued its
activity and its workers were declared essential.
The indirect control that large distributors groups establish through
quality standards (Ponte et al., 2011) implies a neoliberal
organization of work (Castro et al., 2020) that, under normal
conditions, it already meant an increase in the pace of work and stress
for women workers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, despite special
measures were mandated, the same just-in-time work organization, high
work rates and strict compliance with quality standards were maintained,
with negative consequences for the workers.
In the fruit warehouses of Ribera del Xúquer, in addition to the
general rules, such as the use of masks, the measures adopted have
focused on increasing distances, modifying spaces (lockers, canteens,
work lines...) and rearranging mobility flows, installing plastic
separators and creating bubble groups. Like other essential workers in
Spain (Bernardi and Gil-Hernández, 2021) and in other countries
(Stevano, 2021), women warehouse workers have had to deal with more
health risks on the job, despite the measures adopted. One of our
contributions is to show the relationship between this increased risk
and the neoliberal organization of work that was maintained in the
warehouses. Some of the measures adopted, such as distances and plastic
separators in the work lines and the organization of bubble groups, have
not been very effective given the high pace of work and just-in-time
orders from large distributors, which force them to change shifts, work
overtime and modify the stable groups of workers. Another aspect of this
neoliberal logic was the inaction with respect to transportation, which
was essential to maintain production, but also constituted a risk for
infection. The companies treated the issue of transportation as an
externality, a problem they ignored, making it fall on the shoulders of
the workers and increasing their risk. Last but not least, being named
essential workers has not led to higher pay or an improvement in the
social consideration of their work, which continues to be devalued
(Castro et al., 2020).
Another consequence of the pandemic has been the increased
difficulties in reconciling work and family. During the confinement of
2020 and the following months, the traditional recourse to grandparents
or other family members was very limited by the isolation measures,
exposing the problems of the neoliberal social reproduction regime
(Mezzadri, 2022), especially in a low-cost welfare state like Spain with
little capacity to provide protection (Guillén and León, 2016).
In this situation, women workers have implemented a variety of
strategies, combining the work and family dimensions. In some cases,
depending on their financial and family situation, they have chosen not
to go to work. The vast majority of workers, for whom this option was
not feasible, have tried to manage the risk with strategies in various
areas. Thus, they combined the use of masks, those supplied by the
company and their own FFP2 masks, depending on the work groups and work
areas. The issue of close contact with an infected person has been
managed differently, from strict compliance with quarantine, private PCR
tests or, when there were no symptoms, continuing to work. For many
workers, the need to earn a daily wage has been more urgent than caring
for their own health and that of their partners and cohabitants. There
has also been a variety of ways to resolve the issue of commuting to the
warehouse. Our results show how these health risk inequalities at work
correlate with social inequalities external to the company (Acker, 2011;
Holvino, 2010). The working conditions accepted by immigrant workers in
temporary companies, with lower pay and higher risks, are explained by
their social precariousness.
In addition to strategies in the work environment, women workers have
had to develop a variety of strategies in the family environment, in
order to protect the health of the family, care for its members and
guarantee the daily needs of the family. As in other social spheres, the
COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the close social linkage between
productive and reproductive work (Grasso et al., 2021;
Mezzadri, 2022). Women workers have tried to combine their interests in
both spheres, maintaining their salaries and caring for their families,
according to their possibilities and resources.
As we have seen, these work and family strategies have varied
according to various factors. One is the socioeconomic situation, which
establishes differences such as having access to a car or not, being
able to choose whether or not to work overtime, and facing extra
expenses, from FFP2 masks to hiring a woman to take care of the
children. Other factors refer to the employment situation, given that
the situation of discontinuous permanent workers is more consolidated
and they have more room for maneuver, albeit limited, than temporary
workers. Likewise, the relational capital of women workers has
established differences. These social differences, in terms of
socioeconomic status, type of contract, origin and social relations,
have exacerbated the differences at work, as pointed out by Acker (2011)
and Holvino (2010), given that they establish how much room for maneuver
a worker has to avoid or minimize risky situations. In general terms,
female workers with permanent-discontinuous contracts, Spanish and
immigrant workers who have been settled in the area for years, have had
been better able to manage and minimize risks in the situations
considered most dangerous. These options have been more limited for
temporary workers. On the other hand, temporary agency workers, the vast
majority of whom are immigrants, have no ability to manage the situation
and accumulate the maximum number of risk situations.
Our results confirm the general literature on the increase in
pre-existing inequalities during the pandemic (Grasso et al.,
2021; FOESSA, 2022), while highlighting how one of the mechanisms that
has operated is the feedback between inequalities in the organization of
work and social inequalities, particularly for women (Acker, 2011;
Holvino, 2010). These inequalities in the organization of work are
exacerbated by compliance with quality standards in the just-in-time
organization imposed by large distributors groups. Likewise, our
research highlights the relevance of analysis at the local level. Our
study shows how, within the same productive sector, state framework and
work organization, this general tendency towards inequality takes shape
in different ways, both at the level of workers and of territories. On
the one hand, inequalities among women workers have worsened,
reaffirming the need for an intersectional analysis to capture these
unequal impacts. On the other hand, these inequalities are also
territorial. Although there have been multiple cases of COVID-19
infection in the fields and warehouses of Ribera del Xúquer, this
territory has not experienced a large outbreak like those that occurred
in other Spanish agro-exporting areas of Lleida, Huesca, Zaragoza and
Murcia (Pedreño, 2020; Güell and Garcés-Mascareñas, 2020), due to the
labour and housing conditions of the workers. In other words, because of
the different ways in which work is organized in the territories of the
global chains (Coe and Yeung, 2015; Selwyn, 2012).
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