NY Times, August 11 2015 For Many in Spain, a Heralded Economic Recovery Feels Like a Bust By SUZANNE DALEY
ZARAGOZA, Spain — He used to be an interior designer, outfitting shops for one of Spain’s biggest clothing store chains. But that was years ago. Recently, Angel Puyalón, 50, was just hoping to get a call back for a job sorting recyclables. Mr. Puyalón said he would be glad for any work now. His unemployment benefits are finished. He and his wife can no longer pay their mortgage, and they are relying on a food bank to eat. “They say there is a recovery,” Mr. Puyalón said at home here, with a stack of his résumés sitting on the coffee table. “But I don’t know.” Spain, heralded by many as a success story for austerity policies, is on track for more than 3 percent growth this year and has created more than one million jobs since the beginning of 2014. But for many Spaniards, like Mr. Puyalón, the statistics are meaningless — even suspect. Experts say that is not surprising because the vast majority of the new jobs are part-time — some lasting only a few days — and they pay poorly, doing little to improve the lives of the millions of Spaniards who lost their jobs during the global economic crisis. In many ways, the crisis here was deeper and more sustained than the downturn in the United States. Spain lost about 16 percent of its jobs, more than any other eurozone country. Its G.D.P. declined by 7 percent. And for the poorest 10 percent, real income dropped by 13 percent per year from 2007 to 2011, compared with only 1.4 percent for the richest 10 percent, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, based in Paris. The desperation among job seekers is now so acute that many accept work contracts that pay less than the country’s reduced minimum wage — often by agreeing on paper to work two days a week, but actually working many more unpaid hours, experts say. And some, returning to their old jobs, are finding that they must take huge pay cuts. “A new figure has emerged in Spain: the employed person who is below the poverty threshold,” said Daniel Alastuey, the secretary general of UGT Aragón, a regional branch of one of Spain’s largest unions, with more than 1.1 million members. “For a lot of people, the ‘recovery’ just doesn’t feel like a recovery.” Experts say that such new realities are already having a powerful effect on Spain’s political landscape, where, as in Greece, there has been growing support for populist, anti-establishment parties, many of them fielding candidates who have helped the poor and others who denounce rampant corruption among Spain’s political elite. Campaigning for his center-right party recently, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy talked of Spain’s recovery in glowing terms, at one point saying that no one was even “talking about unemployment anymore.” But local and regional elections this spring were humbling for his Popular Party and for the center-left Socialist party, which lost control of cities throughout Spain, including Zaragoza and the capital, Madrid, though both parties have done better in recent polls. Since then, Mr. Rajoy has curbed his optimistic language and promised change. But polls suggest that anti-establishment parties could still do well when the country holds regional and national elections this year. The official unemployment rate sat above 22 percent at the end of the last quarter, with more than 5.15 million people out of work (2.7 million of them unemployed for more than a year). Many of them no longer qualify for any benefits and have family members who are already overextended trying to help. Redouane El Omari, 35, his wife, Esther Mendoza, 32, and their two children, for instance, are about to be evicted from the church housing where they have been living for more than 18 months, so that another needy family can move in. But they cannot turn to relatives for help. Ms. Mendoza’s brother and his family are already living with her mother, and all of them survive on the mother’s pension of 300 euros, or about $331, a month. Mr. Omari, a forklift operator, recently got a week’s work at his old company, but he was stunned when he saw his paycheck. He had earned nearly 35 percent less than before the economic crisis, for the same duties. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said recently, staring at a pay stub showing €169 in wages for the week ($186). Experts say that there are encouraging signs in Spain’s economy. But some wonder whether recent growth is simply the result of a drop in energy prices. And in the long run, the recovery faces many challenges, including a growing group of aging unemployed who may never work again and a middle-aged work force that left school early for high-paying construction jobs, which disappeared when Spain’s real estate bubble burst in 2008. Such work is unlikely to return soon, but that part of the labor force is trained for little else. At the same time, the labor reforms that the government introduced to make it easier to discharge employees has set off rounds of cost cutting. Companies, experts say, are letting expensive workers go and replacing them with people who will take low-paying, part-time work. But this strategy, some say, adds to costs for the government, which is still running an annual budget deficit of more than 5 percent of G.D.P., above the eurozone goal of 3 percent. “Bad jobs can be very expensive for the public,” said José Ignacio Conde-Ruiz, an economics professor at Complutense University of Madrid and the deputy director of Fedea, a research group. “People with bad jobs go to unemployment benefits when they can and wait there trying to look for a better job.” And the number of situations where employees are expected to work many unpaid hours is rising, Mr. Conde-Ruiz said. “People are so desperate,” he said. “They will take anything.” That is what happened to Isabel Carrasco Granado, 38, who found a part-time job in a nursing home this year and was asked to work unpaid overtime. Divorced and raising a daughter, she says that living with the fear of unemployment has taken its toll. “I miss having savings,” she said. “I miss going to the dentist once a year.” Even entrepreneurs and small-business owners who are beginning to get back on their feet say the economy still feels dysfunctional. Chus Castejón, 49, who saw his fledgling skateboard company disintegrate early in the crisis when his bank abruptly demanded full repayment of a €300,000 business loan, has had five tough years, losing his house in the process. He has been making ends meet lately, acting as a go-between for companies looking to import products from Asia. Still, he says, the economy feels fragile, and there is no credit to be had. “I have a lot of friends who are telling me that all the good news is really just advertising,” he said. The economy here in Zaragoza, a city of about 700,000 in northern Spain, is doing relatively well compared with the rest of the country. Even so, recent elections brought in a mayor, Pedro Santisteve, whose party is affiliated with Podemos, the new leftist party. Mr. Santisteve bluntly calls Spain’s economic recovery “a big lie.” He says there are 25,000 families in Zaragoza living on less than €300 a month, and 31,000 who cannot afford the electricity they need. In the last year, more than 500 families have been evicted from their homes. Mr. Santisteve says the city’s budget is so strained, he will have little room to maneuver. But he intends to begin by auditing the books and taking back much of the work the city has been contracting out, he says, at very high prices. For instance, he says, the private company taking care of the city’s trees found 33,000 that needed attention while an alternative survey found 3,700. “The data shows there has been a transfer of wealth from the masses to the most elite,” he said, “and we need to find ways to reverse that.” Mr. Puyalón could not agree more. Before the crisis, he earned €5,000 a month and his wife, Maria Jesús Júdez, 53, earned about €1,100. They spent conservatively, buying an apartment with a mortgage of €1,100 a month. But then he lost his job and his wife’s hours were reduced. They now fear being evicted. “The politicians in office right now,” Mr. Puyalón said, “are just not connected with real life.” _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
