“No, sir. If I didn’t wring a cloth 200 times a day, surely my metacarpals would last longer.” It is Mar Jiménez’s response to what doctors and Social Security have told him: that the diseases he suffers from are of common origin, not professional. The list is long, with the back also affected by several hernias. Rafaela Pimentel is in a similar situation, having undergone surgery for a “rotator cuff and torn tendons” and waiting for a knee prosthesis. One has been a hotel cleaner, one Kelly, as they are known by their association, and the other a domestic worker. But not anymore, because they can’t. They have “broken bodies.”
This is how they refer to their state of health after a career of cleaning work, whether in hotels or homes, which leaves them and their colleagues with consequences that are repeated over and over again. “Herniated discs, chronic tendinitis in the rotator cuff, epicondylitis in the elbow, operated metacarpals, knee problems, mental health problems…,” they list.
It is not an exhaustive list, but the pathologies that they see every day in their colleagues and themselves in any meeting of cleaning, home and care workers. When colleagues of a certain age get together, who have accumulated several years of work, it already seems like a medical consultation. They end with “broken bodies,” repeat Rafaela, 64, and Mar, 62.
In one of these meetings, it occurred to them to create a campaign and a calendar to denounce this situation and demand recognition of the work-related origin of their illnesses. Something that today happens with great difficulty and having to go to court in many cases, they criticize.
This Saturday, November 30 at 6:30 p.m., the groups Territorio Doméstico and Kellys Madrid present in the capital, at the Reina Sofía Museum, the initiative under the motto ‘Without us the world doesn’t move’, with musical performances and an after-party. “I never thought it would look so beautiful,” says Mar about the calendar that “they have been working on for almost two years.” The images, including the one that opens this article, are by the photographer Elvira Mejías.
Today: work with pain or be left without a livelihood
The campaign seeks to “socialize” this problem, put it on the table and make the situations that these workers experience known. First, they work piecework in many cases, with hardly any preventive measures, in tasks that have traditionally been carried out by women and to which little value has been given.
When they have years of work behind them, they start to get sick. One of those pathologies that Mar and Rafaela mention, which are repeated and repeated among their colleagues. “You will see many housekeepers (kellys) undergoing surgery on their metacarpals, for example, because they are diseases from performing repetitive movements due to our work, we are very clear about this,” explains Mar. It also happens among domestic and care workers.
Like hernias, lifting mattresses to make beds and moving elderly people, for example. But this work origin is not recognized on many occasions in consultations, mutual insurance companies or Social Security medical tribunals. “We are making an average of 70 beds a day and are you telling me that this doesn’t hurt my back?” Mar says indignantly. In his case, “after ten years working with pain”, he has had a permanent disability recognized for two years, but with the origin of a common illness.
“We are making an average of 70 beds a day and are you telling me that doesn’t make my back screwed?”
Rafaela, who has been on sick leave due to tendon operations, was deemed fit to work by Social Security last September. “I have surgery and now I can wash my hair or make food, which I couldn’t, but I can’t lift weight or work. How do I get on a ladder to clean some fans, the height of the cabinets, the glass? Or how do I iron?” explains the domestic worker.
The daily life of these women involves working with pain for years. “We are all medicated,” they explain. And, when they “break down”, when they really can’t take it anymore, they are excluded from disability pensions for a professional activity, with amounts higher than those for common illness. Furthermore, they are calculated on low salaries, so the benefit “is not enough to live on,” summarizes Mar.
If they do not even recognize their disability, as is the case with Rafaela, the situation becomes even more complicated. Right now, he is waiting for his unemployment benefits to be recognized. “Thank goodness we got that right, which I never thought would be for me. But now I wouldn’t have anything,” says the domestic worker. For now, she is holding on thanks to “a network of friends” who are helping her pay for the apartment. Seeing himself like this, after almost 30 years working and registering with Social Security, makes him very angry, he admits.
“It is a sexist, patriarchal and capitalist labor market, which only wants to take all the energy from you so that you produce, produce, produce. But when you are old or sick, the system does not want you, it expels you. Because you are no longer worth it,” Pimentel criticizes.
Tomorrow: “I don’t want this to happen to any more of my colleagues”
The workers, organized in the groups Territorio Doméstico and Kellys Madrid, are leading this initiative so that what they experience is “known” and, above all, to change things. To fight for the recognition of their professional illnesses and other associated rights, such as access to early retirement for arduous professions, explains Mar Jiménez.
First, they direct their complaints to the Government, which can legislate and allow these situations to change. For example, “feminizing the list of occupational diseases”, which has hardly any recognized pathologies of jobs carried out mainly by women.
They also warn that they will go to court to ensure that their rights are fulfilled. As they did with the right to unemployment for domestic workers, until reaching Europe, or as the Kellys have done with some occupational diseases, which they have won in the Supreme Court.
“What we have achieved is because we have fought and we are going to continue fighting,” says Rafaela, who recognizes the fatigue of fighting “so many injustices” in their careers. But they don’t do it just for them. They do it for their colleagues. “There are days when I wake up crying from pain. It’s what I have, what I’ve been given, and I don’t want it to happen to others,” says Mar. ‘Without us the world doesn’t move,’ they remember their campaign motto. They want the State and society to recognize it, to do justice to the work of so many women. Therefore, despite everything, they continue walking.
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