"What will I do without my hand?"
A Barcelona factory owner dumped an 'illegal' employee at the hospital after a workplace accident. He told him to say he had lost his hand while fishing
"I arrived at work at seven in the morning as usual and I started to work on some protectors for a boat exhaust pipe. I was passing one of the pieces through the lathe when my hand got caught. It was a split second and I didn't see it coming. 'I've lost my hand,' I shouted to a workmate. He called the boss and passed me the telephone. 'Have you done a lot of damage?' he asked me. 'A lot,' I replied. He told me that I should go to the hospital. 'But before you do, take off your work overalls, otherwise we're all screwed.'"
In between sobs, and distressed at having to relive an episode that has stopped him from sleeping, J. A. N., a 41-year-old Ecuadorian, on Sunday related how he lost his left hand in a workplace accident on January 12 in Vilassar de Mar, Barcelona province.
He was working on a machine that uses three mangles to bend metal when his hand caught and was crushed. He had been employed there for a year and a half without documents because his permit had expired. He had previously worked for three years within the Social Security system.
"I don't want to talk about it. It's in the courts and I'd prefer to talk first with my lawyers," said Jaume Comas last Sunday. Comas is the owner of CMN, a nautical parts company where J. A. N. worked.
The Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan police force, arrested Comas and a company worker for trying to hide the fact that J. A. N. was working for them illegally when the accident occurred.
Comas stands charged with crimes against his employees, denying the right to emergency aid and obstructing justice. The other detainee faces charges of denying the right to emergency aid and concealment. Both are at liberty, awaiting a court order to appear.
"I did what they told me. A workmate helped me to cut my jersey off with scissors. On the way to the hospital they told me: 'When they ask you what happened, say it was in the breakwater.' But I didn't know what a breakwater was. They said: 'Fishing, say you were fishing and a rock fell on your hand,'" says J. A. N.
According to the victim, the owner of CMN took him to hospital in Mataró, also in Barcelona province. "In the emergency room, the other worker said: 'I found him in the street. His hand is wrecked.' And he left me there. When I woke up they had amputated my hand."
"When somebody has an accident like this you have to call an ambulance and advise the Works Inspectorate immediately," says Borja Masramón, the lawyer representing J. A. N. in the name of the Ecuadorian Consulate in Barcelona, the Catalan Federation of Ecuadorian Organizations and the National Secretariat of Ecuadorian Migration.
J. A. N. thought about returning to his home country but his workmates and the Consulate persuaded him to report the matter.
His main priority is to legalize his residence in Spain, where he has been living for the past eight years since emigrating from Ecuador in search of a better life. J. A. N. married here and had his daughter in the country. He now worries that she will be frightened when she sees him without his hand.
He asks himself: "What will I do without my hand? Nobody will give me a job."
Spain's severance payouts
In 2005, Andrés Felipe Betancourt lost his right hand in a workplace accident in Getafe. He was employed grinding meat and cleaning industrial machinery in a sausage factory. Wages were low—3.60 euros an hour—but Betancourt, a Colombian, was employed without the necessary papers. On the morning of the accident, he was told to push pork through a machine, the safety ring on which had been broken for days. He knew this, and so did his bosses, according to the court that sentenced the owner of Parra Ramos, a family-owned business, to two years in prison. Betancourt received 240,000 euros in compensation.
Venancio Parra's lawyer told the court that Betancourt had acted imprudently. "It seemed he wanted to lose his hand," he said.
"How could they say that?" Betancourt asked. "I had plans, ambitions, but my life has changed completely..."
In May 2009, Franns Melgar lost his left arm in a dough mixer at a bread factory in Gandía. As he was working without a contract, the factory owners tried to cover up the incident, dropping Melgar 200 meters from the Francesc de Borja hospital emergency room. "If they ask, tell them you had an accident, but don't say anything about the company," Melgar was warned. His severed arm was thrown into the trash at the factory. Melgar's brother-in-law was fired from the factory as well, with the owners fearing he would go to the media.
The owners await trial. Melgar, who receives a 1,052-euro pension, had his residential status formally legalized by then-Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega due to "extraordinary circumstances."
