Spain Proposes Unemployment Benefits for Moroccan Border Workers in Ceuta and Melilla

The reform project presented on Tuesday by the Minister of Labor in the Council of Ministers aims to grant the right to strike to border workers in Ceuta and Melilla, and to guarantee them unemployment benefits, reports El Diario. This is a historic demand of the group of border workers, who are mostly domestic workers.

These Moroccans cross the border every day to go to work in Ceuta or Melilla. They do not benefit from any allowance in Morocco and are not registered in any database in Spain as job seekers. It is to improve the status of these border workers that Minister Yolanda Díaz proposes this legislative reform, which will be carried out in agreement with Morocco.

Last year, the former general secretary of the CCOO de Ceuta, Juan Luis Aróstegui, addressed an open letter to the Minister of Labor to remind him of this long-standing demand. "These workers (and the contracting companies) contribute to Social Security for unemployment, but certain texts deprive them of their rights in case of dismissal," he explains in the letter. The closure of the border by Morocco for health and diplomatic reasons with Spain has also increased the precariousness of these border workers.

"I contribute to unemployment, but I am not entitled to unemployment, I pay 25% Income Tax, but... I don’t know if I’m declared or not," denounced Hassan Arahou, a 48-year-old watchmaker from Tetouan, and spokesperson for the border workers who demonstrated weekly in front of the government delegation in Ceuta last year to demand the reopening of the border.