“No, sir. If I didn’t wring out a cloth 200 times a day, my metacarpals would probably last longer. This is Mar Jiménez’s response to what doctors and Social Security told him: that the illnesses he suffers from are of common and not occupational origin. The list is long, the back also being affected by several hernias. Rafaela Pimentel is in a similar situation, having undergone surgery for “rotator cuff and torn tendons” and awaiting a knee replacement. One was a housekeeper in a hotel, one Kelly, as their association calls them, and the other is a domestic worker. But not anymore, because they can’t. They have “broken bodies”.
This is how they talk about their state of health after a career in cleaning, whether in hotels or homes, which leaves them and their colleagues with consequences that repeat themselves again and again. “Herniated discs, chronic tendinitis of the rotator cuff, epicondylitis of the elbow, operated metacarpals, knee problems, mental health problems…”, they list.
This is not an exhaustive list, but of the pathologies that they see every day in their colleagues and themselves during any meeting of cleaning, house and care workers. When colleagues of a certain age, who have accumulated several years of work, come together, it already resembles a medical consultation. They end with “broken bodies”, repeat Rafaela, 64 years old, and Mar, 62 years old.
During one of these meetings, they had the idea of creating a campaign and a calendar to denounce this situation and demand recognition of the occupational origin of their illnesses. Something that happens today with great difficulty and that requires recourse to the courts in many cases, they criticize.
This Saturday, November 30 at 6:30 p.m., the groups Territorio Doméstico and Kellys Madrid present in the capital, at the Reina Sofía Museum, the initiative under the motto “Without us, the world does not move”, with musical performances and a party later. “I never thought it would be this beautiful,” Mar says of the calendar that “they’ve been working on for almost two years.” The images, including the one that opens this article, are by photographer Elvira Mejías.
Today: work in pain or find yourself without means of subsistence
The campaign seeks to “socialize” this problem, to put it on the table and to publicize the situations these workers experience. First, they often work on a piece-rate basis, with virtually no preventive measures, in tasks traditionally performed by women and to which little value is attached.
When they have years of work behind them, they start to get sick. One of those pathologies mentioned by Mar and Rafaela, which are repeated and repeated among their colleagues. “You will see many housekeepers (Kelly) having surgery on their metacarpals, for example, because these are diseases caused by performing repetitive movements due to our work, we are very clear about this,” explains Mar. This also happens among domestic workers and caregivers. .
Like hernias, lifting mattresses to make beds and moving elderly people for example. But this professional origin is not often recognized in consultations, mutual insurance companies or Social Security medical tribunals. “We make an average of 70 beds per day and you’re telling me that doesn’t hurt my back?” Mar is indignant. In his case, “after ten years of working in pain”, he has a permanent disability recognized for two years, but at the origin of a banal illness.
“We make an average of 70 beds per day and you’re telling me that doesn’t hurt my back?”
Rafaela, who was on sick leave due to tendon operations, was deemed fit for work by Social Security last September. “I had surgery and now I can wash my hair or prepare food, which I couldn’t do, but I can’t lift weights or work. How to climb a ladder to clean certain fans, the height of furniture, the glass? Or how to iron? », Explains the domestic worker.
The daily life of these women consists of working with pain for years. “We are all medicated,” they explain. And, when they “break down”, when they really can’t take it anymore, they are excluded from disability pensions for professional activity, with amounts higher than those for a trivial illness. In addition, they are calculated on low salaries, so that the allowances “are not enough to live on”, summarizes Mar.
If they don’t even recognize their disability, as is the case with Rafaela, the situation becomes even more complicated. He is currently waiting for his unemployment benefits to be recognized. “Thank God we got it right, which I never thought it would be for me. But now I would have nothing,” said the domestic worker. For now, she is holding on thanks to “a network of friends” who help her pay for the apartment. Seeing himself like this, after almost 30 years of work and affiliation with Social Security, makes him very angry, he admits.
“It’s a sexist, patriarchal, capitalist labor market that only wants to take all the energy from you so that you produce, produce, produce. But when you’re old or sick, the system doesn’t want you, it kicks you out. Because you are no longer worth it,” criticizes Pimentel.
Tomorrow: “I don’t want this to happen to my colleagues again”
The workers, organized in the Territorio Doméstico and Kellys Madrid groups, are leading this initiative so that what they are experiencing is “known” and, above all, to change things. Fight for recognition of their occupational illnesses and other associated rights, such as access to early retirement for difficult jobs, explains Mar Jiménez.
First, they address their complaints to the government, which can legislate and allow these situations to change. For example, the “feminization of the list of occupational diseases”, which has practically no recognized pathologies in professions carried out mainly by women.
They also warn that they will go to court to ensure their rights are respected. As they did with the right to unemployment for domestic workers, until reaching Europe, or as the Kellys did with certain occupational diseases, which they won before the Supreme Court.
“What we achieved is because we fought and we will continue to fight,” says Rafaela, who recognizes the fatigue of fighting “so many injustices” during her career. But they don’t do it just for themselves. They do it for their colleagues. “There are days when I wake up crying in pain. This is what I have, what I was given, and I don’t want this to happen to others,” says Mar. “Without us, the world doesn’t move,” they remember their campaign motto. They want the state and society to recognize it, to do justice to the work of so many women. So, despite everything, they continue to march.
