Earnin' a Crust = Arm & Leg -(literally)- Shocking Spanish baker's treatment of migrant worker.

international | worker & community struggles and protests | other press Friday June 12, 2009 02:32 by gurggle - it really isn't funny.

This ain't a Spanish story - nor is it a migrant story. It's a worker story.

A Spanish bakery accused of barbaric behaviour towards an illegal worker will face "the full weight of the law", the Spanish government has vowed. The statement comes amid shock over the case of a Bolivian worker whose arm was cut off in an accident at work. Bosses at the bakery in Valencia are accused of dumping him 100m (330 feet) from a hospital entrance and throwing him severed limb in a rubbish bin.

Mr Rilles was allegedly warned by the son of the bakery owner not to tell doctors where his accident had taken place, and was left a distance of some 100m from the hospital entrance, while bleeding heavily. Mr Rilles, 33, worked had 12-hour days at the bakery, earning 23 euros a day (£20; $32) under no contract.

Most of the richest states in Europe, before or after the economic downturn count around 10% of their workforce as non-regularised migrants who are cheap to hire and easy to fire. Spain with its 16% of such labour is not exceptional.

But what is appalling throughout Europe is not only the exploitation of workers but the total disregard with which normal "European" safety considerations are held by "ordinary" small business employers.

This article describes just one case, that of a Bolivian worker in a bakery who lost an arm in a dough mixer and was then unceremoniously dumped 100 metres from the hospital by his small business family employers - the salt of the Earth types who put the salt in the wounds of decency.

It doesn't matter if the case of Franns Rilles Melgar Vargas has now prompted the Spanish state to grant him residency and thus ease his health care costs. Nor does it really help the wider issues at stake and crying out for recognition that the English language media are reporting his story.

His kind of work didn't cost him an arm
- his being that kind of worker did.

Cases similar to his occur everyday in every state of the EU where migrant workers have taken the place once reserved for the 19th working classes whose principle ambition in life was see a son or daughter go up a chimney and bring back the metaphorical bacon.

Of course bacon of the non-metaphorical kind comes from pigs and just like dough is far beyond the realistic hopes of the workers who without dwelling on semantics increasingly do the real work, uhygienic or unpleasant, boring or dangerous in the first world.

we are talking modern slavery. & before losing his arm Mr Rilles was probably very well paid. & had his employers had the human decency to see him as a human being and bring him to casualty we probably would never have been invited by the shocked media of several languages to linger on his case, offering diagnosis or suggesting prognosis.

But here are some the symptoms common to the syndrome :-

Before Franns lost his arm, he most probably sent lots of the paltry cash he earned in the dead hour shift, before building site work begins, back to his family. That is the way with these cheap to hire migrant humans from the third world, tied to the mammys' apron strings and overwhelmingly sentimental and undoubtedly committed to the liquidity of the free-market they worry not about a 65 hour week and seem to obsess themselves with the idea that they can make a difference back home. He most probably turned up on time every day and gritted his teeth every time his boss looked his way.

Franns was yesterday's news in Spain and will be tomorrow's beyond. His former employer's bakery has of course been shut down and will face the full consequences of whatever law deals with the idea of driving a non-regularised worker almost to the hospital with one less limb that the usual set and should we get anatomical - - - one severed artery. Alas, the man having come from Bolivia understood enough of the Spanish language to not only make him an easy enough skivvy but also afforded him enough words to tell the hospital staff what had happened to him. It is somehow a mystery that before he lost his arm nobody seemed to care how articulate he might have been in describing what had been happening to him and his class.

But lose an arm and people stand up and take notice!

Franns is almost a martyr & his family & friends are perhaps & possibly & quite possibly & no doubt
rightfully proud of his achievements .

Oh such a happy note, those of us who have felt sore about not seeing memorial services in the cathedrals of Europe for those migrants and their babies (90+ on average) who died on their way to our economies last week in either the Atlantic Ocean or Mediterranean Sea, may now hope his fame lasts longer than Susan Boyle's.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8096076.stm