After the huge controversy over the appalling living conditions of many immigrant workers brought into Portugal to work for intensive agricultural businesses, the workers themselves have started to turn – this time over the way they are treated by their employers.
A protest on Friday at greenhouses in São Teotónio saw demands for more clarity over payments; more breaks in the 12-hour shifts, and the right to take half an hour off to eat lunch. One worker told that “this company just does not listen." The protest moved to the company’s offices when protestors realized the man in charge of the exploration was on the premises.
“Their complaints extended to the cleanliness of cloakrooms and the canteen, but were mainly focused on the intransigence of those who define working conditions”. A delay in salary payments “gave the impulse of courage for the protest”.
The conditions of immigrant workers have been notorious for years. But they came to a head during the Covid crisis when Odemira became a ‘center of infection’ by dint of the fact that agricultural workers were living in such unhygienic and impoverished conditions
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