Meardi et al. : Unions and Migrant Labour in Construction in Spain and the UK
Interview that his employees are used to working 200 – 240 hours per month, with overtime remaining undeclared. The crisis may have actually worsened the situation, because the workers who kept their jobs may increase their working hours to compensate for the fall in the hourly pay rate.
There has been a clear improvement between 2004 and 2008 though, thanks to renewed efforts by the Labour Inspectorate and the new law limiting subcontracting , which requires company registration conditional on H&S training. A collective agreement has also introduced individual professional construction cards (tarjetas profesionales de construccion ), again conditional on H&S training, to be made compulsory from 2012.
An important difference between the UK and Spain in apparent in the area of H&S training. UK firms have a longer experience in adapting training to the needs of non – English speakers. Until 2004, the general practice was attaching non – English speakers to English – speaking compatriots who could act as interpreters, but the delivery of training in foreign languages has become common practice in large companies in recent years, and politically sensitive sites such as the Olympics and Heathrow airport have gone even further by offering English language classes for their foreign workers. By contrast, Spanish employers display a striking neglect for linguistic issues. A Catalan employer representative, asked about this issue, answered with a mere: