One of the most important centres of strawberry-production is in Spain, in the Andalusian province of Huelva and one of the crucial advantages of this sector is the low cost of labour. Around 55.000 workers are employed every year in this one region and increasingly migrant workers. Confronted by the high level of organisation of the immigrants in 2001, the Spanish authorities have since sought to encourage labour migration from other countries and in particular central and eastern Europe. Maroccans and Subsaharians are more and more replaced by polish and romanian workers (mainly women), and a transnational campaign seems to be necessary to break the ethnical splits and the attempt of the big companies and the peasants to play one group against each other. Moreover the proposal for the campaign, which should also be discussed in the frame of coming European Social Forum in London, includes the idea to make actions against the endprofiteurs of this chain of exploitation: the big supermarkets all over Europe.
Strawberries from Huelva
Submitted by fls on October 5, 2004 - 07:13.
