In addition to Amazon's impact on the labor market and the healthcare system of Alt Empordà, the giant's establishment in the region has also been noticed in terms of mobility. In the last 3 years, for example, both on the highway and on the national roads leading to the industrial estate, called Logis Empordà, the traffic of freight trucks with the company's smiling logo is constant. This has caused several mobility complaints in small towns like Fortià, close to the industrial park, which see their functioning altered by the passage of goods, and have united to ask the Generalitat de Catalunya for a double-lane bypass that surrounds Figueres, which has already been put out to tender for 98.8 million euros. The presence of Amazon's gigantic warehouses in this industrial park, near the warehouses of leading companies such as Transgourmet or Grup Perelada, has also brought to the table the possibility of expanding it with 166 new hectares and a new intermodal freight station. However, a group of neighbors, farmers, and environmentalists are radically against it, as the new industrial warehouses would be built on agricultural fields near the Aiguamolls de l'Empordà Natural Park.
Visits to the CAP of Amazon workers strain public healthcare in Alt Empordà
Doctors and unions denounce that injuries derived from repetitive work at the large logistics center in El Far d'Empordà are often not recognized as occupational illness by the company's mutual insurance association.
GironaAmazon's new logistics center, opened in 2023 in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Figueres, has revolutionized the Alt Empordà. It is, by far, the largest company in the region, ahead of major companies such as Antonio Escudero supermarkets in La Jonquera or the food giant Antonio Escudero supermarkets in La Jonquera or the food giant Transgourmet. Around 2,000 people work there day and night, a volume that represents more than 1% of the entire population of all municipalities within a 40 km radius. And, logically, this correlation between workers and inhabitants, much higher than that of any large company in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, causes everything surrounding Amazon's business to have a direct impact on the region's day-to-day life.
One of the sectors that has most felt the consequences of the arrival of the American multinational is healthcare. Several general practitioners from Figueres and surrounding towns explain to ARA that, since the logistics center opened in the Far d'Empordà industrial estate, they have begun to treat patients with musculoskeletal pain that they did not have before, a product of repetitive work at the plant. These are workers referred by the company's mutual insurance: they injure themselves while working, they go for private coverage, but since it is not an isolated accident on a single day but accumulated pain, it is not accredited as a work accident and they are sent to primary care centers. This prevents them from receiving higher benefits during sick leave and, in turn, ends up saturating the public healthcare system, which is already very strained.
From the mutual to the CAP and without a sick leave for a work accident
From the mutual to the CAP and without sick leave for work accident
Trade unions also support the doctors' complaints and have long been fighting for workers with work-related conditions to be recognized for sick leave due to work accidents. They assure that it is a problem that has been dragging on for a long time everywhere, but that the case of Amazon in l'Empordà has become particularly visible due to the magnitude of the company in relation to the surrounding infrastructure. The Amazon works council is made up of 25 representatives, 19 from UGT, 3 from CCOO, 2 from FETICO, and one independent. Zoraida Segarra, a warehouse worker who is responsible for placing merchandise on shelves, is the general secretary of the UGT section at the company: "We have many workers to whom the mutual insurance company has not granted sick leave and who have had to go to the public health service because they cannot provide service to the company. Therefore, whether they are members or not, we help them with the determination of contingencies so that Social Security reviews this leave, but a backlog is being created and we still haven't resolved those from 2025," she explains.
Along the same lines, Younes Diarra, a delegate for occupational risk prevention for the same union, who is responsible for loading merchandise onto trucks, adds: "When they arrive at the mutual insurance company, they are told that it is a pathology they already had previously, but I ask myself: to what extent can a mutual insurance company doctor know if a worker already had it before or not?".
This situation was experienced firsthand by a veteran worker this Holy Week. She works in packaging: she was assembling a box with a heavy jar, turned her hand abruptly, and began to feel pain. She tried to continue, but after a few minutes, she alerted the supervisor, who accompanied her to the infirmary, where they applied ice, spray, and a bandage. Then, to the mutual insurance, to the D.G.H. Clinic, where they performed an examination, an X-ray, and diagnosed her with a sprain. "They told me it wasn't considered a work accident and that I should go to the CAP," she recounts. And she continues: "It's unfair, not just for the money from the work accident leave, which is about 300 euros difference, but because it shows they don't trust us. As soon as I got hurt, I said something, and if I had come in with a headache, I wouldn't have been able to work the first few hours," complains the worker, who has already filed an administrative claim.
Mechanized work and emergency medical team
Furthermore, the company responds that, aware that it works with a very high volume of workers, it operates with many safety measures, risk prevention, and has an on-site emergency medical team. The company also highlights that it opts for rotation (thanks to the agreement with the works council) and that the work is not physically demanding, since the logistics center in Far d'Empordà, technically named bcn4, has more than 150,000 square meters, almost all with robotic surface, and 23 kilometers of conveyor belt. Furthermore, of the almost 25 million products that enter and leave the plant, most are not heavy and workers do not have to use complicated devices to inventory them on the shelves. And, regarding the assessments of work accidents by the mutual insurance doctors, Amazon insists that it has no influence over them. Responsibility then falls on the insurance, but workers and unions have no dialogue with their managers, let alone with those of private clinics, in order to convey their complaints.