UGT general secretary Pepe Álvarez rejected the circular migration model proposed by the government – which involves hiring at home and then returning to one’s country – and argued that it should be a “priority” for unemployed Spaniards to work and undocumented people residing in the country.
“I don’t say ‘Spaniards first’ and I never will. I think that half a million people without papers [que viven en España] “They must be a priority before the State, through quotas, goes to look for workers in another country. There is a part of the business world of this country that wants precisely to create a recruitment office in Buenos Aires, to see how many people they can recruit and put them to work in uncontrolled conditions,” he said in an interview on Radio Nacional this Tuesday.
In this sense, Álvarez insisted that there are almost three million unemployed people “who are not trained to be able to occupy one of these magnificent jobs that, according to companies, exist and almost never arise”. “With 500,000 people, perhaps more, who do not have papers in our country, why do we have to expel from another place people who perhaps have no interest in coming to work in Spain? It seems to me that the reasonable thing is to work with the people who are here.”
“The debate on minors is indecent”
The UGT leader argued that the migratory phenomenon “must be seen from a humanist perspective.” The debate on the relocation of children without families who arrive in Spain “is highly indecent,” he said. “The fact that we are debating whether 10,000 minors in Spain can be incorporated into the entire country seems ridiculous to me.”
In addition, he denounced the fact that, despite the labor reform, Spain continues to have a problem with the quality of employment, which must have greater stability and good conditions for the worker. “We cannot settle only for tourist years, only for seasonal employment, but we must look for employment that generates stability and good working conditions,” he stressed, when asked about the unemployment data for August published on Tuesday.
Álvarez criticized the fact that the cost of dismissal is used, when seniority is very short, to replace that employee and hire a new one. “Now it costs a little, but it is a little that is very small and therefore bearable,” he denounced.
