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 noticeable 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, named Logis Empordà, the traffic of freight trucks with the company's smiling logo is constant. This has caused various mobility complaints in small towns like Fortià, near the industrial estate, which see their functioning altered by the passage of goods, and they have united to ask the Generalitat de Catalunya for a dual-lane bypass that encircles Figueres, which has already been put out to tender for 98.8 million euros. The presence of Amazon's gigantic warehouses in this industrial estate, 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 residents, farmers, and environmentalists are radically opposed, as the new industrial warehouses would be built on agricultural fields near the Aiguamolls de l'Empordà Natural Park.
Visits to the CAP by Amazon workers strain public healthcare in Alt Empordà
Doctors and unions denounce that injuries derived from repetitive work in the large logistics center of El Far d'Empordà are often not recognized as occupational disease by the company's mutual insurance
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 the supermarkets of Antonio Escudero in La Jonquera or the food giant supermarkets of Antonio Escudero in La Jonquera or the food giant Transgourmet. Around 2,000 people work 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 day-to-day life of the region.
One of the sectors that have most noticed the consequences of the arrival of the American multinational is healthcare. Several general practitioners from Figueres and surrounding towns explain to el ARA that, since the logistics center was opened in the Far de Empordà industrial estate, they have started to see patients with musculoskeletal ailments that they did not have before, as a result of repetitive work at the plant. These are workers who are referred by the company's mutual insurance: they injure themselves while working, they go to private coverage, but since it is not a one-off accident on a single day but accumulated pain, it is not accredited as a work accident and they are sent to the primary care center. This prevents them from receiving higher benefits during their sick leave and, as a knock-on effect, ends up saturating the public healthcare system, which is already very strained.
From the mutual insurance to the primary care center and without sick leave for a work accident
From the mutual insurance to the CAP and without sick leave for work accident
Unions also support the doctors' complaints and have long been fighting for workers with work-related conditions to be recognized as having a work accident leave. They assure that it is a problem that has been dragging on everywhere for a long time, but the case of Amazon in l'Empordà has become especially visible due to the magnitude of the company in relation to its 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 the shelves, is the general secretary of the UGT section in the company: "We have many workers whom the mutual insurance company has not granted 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 determine the contingencies so that Social Security reviews this leave, but a collapse is being created and we still do not have the ones from 2025 resolved," 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 tell them that it is a pathology they already had previously, but I ask myself: to what extent can a mutual insurance 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 informed the supervisor, who accompanied her to the infirmary, where they applied ice, spray, and a bandage. Afterwards, she went to the mutual insurance, to Clínica Girona, where they performed an examination, an X-ray, and diagnosed her with a sprain. "They told me it was not considered a work accident and that I should go to the CAP," she recounts. And she continues: "It's unfair, it's not just about 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 so, and if I had come from home with pain, 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 equipment
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.in situ. The company also highlights that it is committed to rotation (thanks to the agreement with the works council) and that the work is not physically demanding, since the logistics center at Far d'Empordà, technically named bcn4, has more than 150,000 square meters, almost all with a 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 occupational accidents by the mutual insurance doctors, Amazon insists that it has no influence. Responsibility then falls on the insurance, but workers and unions have no dialogue with their managers, let alone with those of private clinics, to convey their complaints.