The conflict at the Barcelona kennel fester deepens: former workers take the City Council to court.

BarcelonaThe conflict at the Barcelona Pet Shelter (CAACB) continues unabated. A year and a half ago, a nearly two-month strike was held to denounce the conditions in which many animals were kept. Now, another labor dispute is straining the Catalan capital's kennel. The CGT union has taken the City Council to court over the dismissal of eight employees from the center's dog training team.

One of these workers is Carles Gomà, who on March 17 received an email informing him that he was out of work after more than a decade working at the center. In that message, the company Help Guau—which the workers had been working for since 2023—explained that the City Council had decided not to renew the contract because it wanted to change the direction of a facility that had been stretched to its limits for years.

City council sources explain that, given "the complex nature" of the dogs that have been in the pound for quite some time without being adopted and "the notable increase in the number of dogs with behavioral problems," they wanted to change the profile of the workers and hire a team of ethologists - behavior experts. All of this, in line with increasing the number of adoptions and reducing the volume of dogs currently in the CAACB.

In conversation with ARA, however, Gomà and his dismissed colleagues question this version and claim that they were fired in retaliation for having made public in May 2024 their concern about some decisions that were being made at the pound and that, in their opinion,. In a statement, they warned that euthanasia and the expulsion of some dogs from the center were being favored in order to cope with the overcrowding of the space.

In that document, they explained, for example, that caregivers had been left out of behavior meetings where the dogs' future is decided. This led to the euthanasia of animals that, according to them, could still have been adopted. They also reported that they had found a list of thirteen other dogs that the center wanted to transfer to a private facility that Help Guau has in Argentona, where, unlike the CAACB, dog walkers are not allowed and their chances of being adopted would be even more reduced.

"That opened Pandora's box. If we hadn't said anything, we would still have the job," says Gomà, who believes that the company and the City Council have punished them because they consider them "conflictive." They believe that the council's argument for changing the workers' professional profiles to ethologists is an "excuse." Therefore, the eight workers who have lost their jobs have taken the case to court to demand that the new company that manages the service take over their contract.

The new tender under scrutiny

To bolster their argument, the dismissed workers argue that the new contract specifications demonstrate that they are seeking "identical professional profiles" to those already in place. In a statement, the CGT union, which represents the eight dismissed workers, denounces that the technical and administrative specifications of the new CAACB dog training tender propose the hiring of non-medical personnel, specifically two coordination positions, with higher education degrees and a minimum of three years of experience. "Four of the eight dismissed workers meet these conditions," they emphasize.

They also note that the new specifications also include the hiring of six people in the professional category of dog trainer—who requires a minimum of two years of demonstrable experience. These requirements, they emphasize, are met by the eight dismissed workers. For this reason, they have expanded their complaint to the courts against the City Council and the company Help Guau with these tender documents. City Council sources, however, maintain that "in no case are the professional categories of the new services the same as those of the previous service."

Be that as it may, the kennel conflict remains entrenched and causing headaches for the municipal government, which in the April plenary session already saw the PP initiative, with the votes of Junts and Barcelona en Comú, as the opposition, censured the First Deputy Mayor, Laia Bonet, for this case. At the last Urban Planning Committee meeting, Bonet also rejected a request from ERC (Republican Rural Development) for an audit of the CAACB situation and defended that "Barcelona has been and continues to be a benchmark in animal welfare policies."