Days of more than 13 hours, without days off or weekends, for only 700 euros per month. These are the working conditions in which the two employees of a livestock farm in Guntín, in Lugo, worked for two years. The managers of this farm are a father and his two sons, who this morning will be sitting on the benchand the Provincial Court of Lugo to respond to the accusations, which could correspond to a crime of labor exploitation. The indictment reveals the daily life of the two workers, between October 2018 and August 2020. They had no days off, no vacations, and the family had not registered them with Social Security either, conditions for those that the The prosecution is demanding three years in prison for each of them from the accused. Of the meager salary they paid him each month, The accused also stole 50 euros for accommodation costs which consisted of providing them with a roof in an annex of the farm with an electric cooker as the only cooking instrument and which the two employees had to share after long days of work on the farm.
For the alleged crime against workers’ rights, the prosecution demands nine years in prison in total and that the three defendants jointly and severally compensate one of the employees to the tune of 13,240 euros for unpaid wages and salary supplements, as well as an additional 6,000 euros for moral damages. For the other worker, the public prosecutor is seeking compensation of 2,042 euros for salary costs and 1,300 euros for moral damages suffered.
Regarding the duration of the situation, almost two years, the prosecutor emphasizes that the two workers assumed that their working hours were contrary to the regulations due to their situation, because They were migrants, in an irregular situation, not knowing the language and without economic resources. The complaint was filed when the two men went to a shelter in August 2020 and confessed what they had been experiencing for years at the Guntín farm.
Another close affair
It is striking that near this farm, in Sarria, a similar case occurred that brought its owner to court in 2021 for employing three Colombian citizens without work permits, with days of up to 11 hours, low wages and unsanitary conditions. conditions. The National Police officers who released them explained that they slept among garbage and rodents, and that there were months when they were not paid. In this case, to sleep they only had “a mattress with burst springs and a sofa bed in the kitchen”, while the toilets were unusable and they had no drinking water, only a river catchment that “most of the “sometimes” it came out “full of mud”.
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