1,000 euros a month? Dream on… [View all]

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http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/03/12/inenglish/1331575980_208983.html


Lucía Cuesta, 25. Sound engineer. Out of work for over a year. She has never worked in her profession. / SAMUEL SÁNCHEZ (EL PAÍS)

In the summer of 2005, a 27-year-old called Carolina Alguacil wrote a letter to EL PAÍS. Called I am a mileurista, it painted a portrait of a generation, and was a searing condemnation of all that was wrong in Spain’s labor market and its exploitative use of short-term contracts and low wages. Alguacil wrote: “The mileurista is somebody aged between 25 and 34, with a university degree and who speaks foreign languages, with a post-graduate qualification and training. They normally start out in the hostelry sector, and have spent long periods working unpaid as what are euphemistically called interns. After several years, you finally get a fulltime contract, but you won’t be earning more than 1,000 euros a month. But you’d better not complain. You won’t be saving any money; you can’t afford a car; and forget about children. You live from day to day.”

Rereading that letter almost seven years on, what is most depressing is that the situation for Carolina and the generation coming up behind her has worsened. “Now most of us can only dream of earning 1,000 euros,” says Alguacil. Now working as a freelance graphic designer, she says her circumstances have improved, but in her mid-thirties she still believes her career path has been truncated and that she is not earning as much as she should.

In 2005, Spain’s economy grew by 3.6 percent; the government was talking about joining the G8 group of leading economies. But even then, unemployment among the under thirties was more than 20 percent: now it stands at nearly 50 percent.

In the wake of controversial legislation introduced by the previous Socialist Party government making it easier to hire and fire, and with the Popular Party administration determined to press ahead with further reform that it admits will lead to more job losses in the short term, EL PAÍS has been talking to Carolina Alguacil’s contemporaries around Spain, as well as those about to enter the labor market. The picture that emerges is of a generation that can only dream of a time when 1,000 euros a month could be considered exploitative.


*** i can't help but see america, as well, when i read this.