Spain Lowers Barriers for Agricultural Workers to Access Wage Subsidies

The steep fall in esti­mated olive pro­duc­tion in Spain has had a dra­matic effect on employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for sea­sonal agri­cul­tural work­ers.

Olive grow­ers are cur­rently reduc­ing work­days in the groves as many pro­duc­ers are expe­ri­enc­ing their worst har­vest in recent mem­ory.

The cen­tral gov­ern­ment in Madrid has approved new mea­sures to ease the access to unem­ploy­ment sup­port for field labor­ers in Extremadura and Andalusia, two of the three largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions in Spain.

A royal decree approved by the Council of Ministers has reduced the num­ber of min­i­mum work­days needed for agri­cul­tural work­ers to access unem­ploy­ment sup­port and agrar­ian income from 20 days to 10 days.

Temporary work­ers are cru­cial for the olive sec­tor, and extended pub­lic sup­port has been acti­vated already. The mea­sures will allow sea­sonal work­ers to col­lect €460 per month.

The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fishery and Food esti­mated that olive oil pro­duc­tion would drop to 780,000 tons in the 2022/23 crop year, 47 per­cent less than last sea­son.

“This fig­ure, which rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year, has been due to the severe drought of the sum­mer period in the main pro­duc­ing areas, which has caused prob­lems in fruit set,” the min­istry said.

While esti­mates for the har­vest are sig­nif­i­cantly lower than nor­mal, the min­istry said, ​“these esti­mates could increase accord­ing to the cli­matic evo­lu­tion and rain­fall that may occur in the com­ing weeks since the fruit is still in the process of oil accu­mu­la­tion.”

In March, the gov­ern­ment reduced the min­i­mum num­ber of work­days until the end of the year from 35 to 20. With the new mea­sure, pub­lic sup­port to tem­po­rary work­ers will be extended to June 2023.

According to El Mundo, this is the first time in Spanish his­tory that the min­i­mum work­days needed to access pub­lic sup­port are reduced to 10. In 1994, rural employ­ment leg­is­la­tion signed by the gov­ern­ment and unions was hailed as his­tor­i­cal, and it set the min­i­mum require­ment to 40 work­days.

In recent crop years, such as 2012 and 2019, when har­vest decreased by 50 per­cent com­pared to pre­vi­ous sea­sons, the min­i­mum require­ment was set at 20 days, and it is cred­ited with safe­guard­ing sea­sonal labor­ers.

The new royal decree, which went into effect imme­di­ately, also sought to safe­guard con­sumers from exces­sive energy price rises and recon­fig­ured the salaries in sev­eral pub­lic sec­tor worker cat­e­gories.

• Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
• Cinco Días
• Agropopular