Six out of ten people in the Canary Islands do not have a job

By Pedro González Cánovas I have heard everything about people who do not have work in the Canary Islands. The cruelty of many of those who work reaches extremes in which they even affirm that "they do not work because they do not want to" or that "they work in the market ...

June 10 2013 (14:42 WEST)
By Pedro González Cánovas
I have heard everything about people who do not have work in the Canary Islands. The cruelty of many of those who work reaches extremes in which they even affirm that "they do not work because they do not want to" or that "they work in the market ...

I have heard everything about people who do not have work in the Canary Islands. The cruelty of many of those who work reaches extremes in which they even affirm that "they do not work because they do not want to" or that "they work in the black market" without a contract.

However, when we are told about social exclusion, indigence, hunger, these arguments do not hold and social alarms sound again, adhering to a reality that nobody wants, but that we are all obliged to accept.

The European statistical office (Eurostat) provides us with more accurate data in this regard, and no less terrifying for it. The Canary Islands is one of the territories that has suffered the most job destruction from 2007 to today. We are talking about only 4 out of 10 people of working age having access to a job.

The statistics in the archipelago have skyrocketed from 2007 to now, leaving employment in the Canary Islands in a situation of extreme urgency. As of today, only one in four young people has a job, which means 25% of people between the ages of 16 and 25. Only one in three women is employed: in reality, 37.5% of them are able to access a job, when in 2007 it was close to half of the active population. While among men the drop in the employment rate, in the same period, is 18 points.

On the other hand, the decline in the quality of employment and wages in the archipelago socially undermines, making households with less than half of the people employed unsustainable, having found in the Canary Islands the Temporary Employment Companies (ETT) the best field of work.

In such a way, a representative of the more than 20 existing in the archipelago assured that during the years 2010 and 2011 they had accounted for 94% of temporary hires. Showing that reality that they mean, where the loss of rights of the agreements, which did not foresee the entry of personnel hired by the hour and create true discrimination with respect to the ETT personnel, so they end the month remunerating their workers with much less than the minimum interprofessional salary, falls short when they verbalize their aspiration to become "employment agencies" without hesitating to thank the Spanish Labor Reform.

The latter leads us to think about the situation of those 4 out of 10 people who work in the Canary Islands and the real situation of their families. In addition to reaffirming the social failure in which the current managers and politicians at the head have put us, who are nothing more than eventual employees with four-year contracts "the poor".

*Pedro González Cánovas, member of ANC.

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