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.

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).

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.

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 interviewed1. 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).

Ribera del Xúquer is a natural and historical area, shaped by the river Xúquer, with 1255.31 km2, 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 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 standards3 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”.

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.

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 agreement4 regulates the types of contracts, temporary and permanent-discontinuous5, 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.

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).

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).