The company has installed a prefabricated caset at the entrance to the plant. The workers must come in for it. Inside the hut, the company's private police take the temperature with a device; if there is no inconvenience, to work. Two workers have arrived at the same time and have built a house in which security measures in the area have been broken. Security police wear gloves, mouth mask, and a plastic mask that covers the entire face. But place the temperature intake apparatus on each worker's wrist or forehead, without respecting the safety distance. There are three other private policemen of the company Barrurago, who have been arrested in Madrid. They carry the same personal prevention team, but two of them have no plastic face mask and speak to each other less than a meter away from each other.

“Are you a journalist?” asks me a woman waiting outside. As a representative of CCOO, he is part of Michelín’s works council, with which we have spoken and with a member of his union. The majority trade unions have come to the Works Council to verify compliance with the safety measures agreed with the company and which have the majority of CCOO and UGT. They are the only ones who, together with the CIS, voted in favour of the enlargement of Michelín). They have explained that they have been in the company at the Semana Santa bridge, concretizing these measures for each of the spaces. Asked whether they consider the return to work reasonable, they were satisfied with the proposal. They have defended the agreed measures: “You can’t secure 100%. But many measures have been put in place, now we have to see if they are as effective as we think.” They have stressed the importance of the responsibility and responsibility of each of the workers of the company.

In the main entrance, the image is repeated: the workers arrive continuously but dispersed; they enter the slug, the police take the temperature and reach the factory. A representative of LAB in the Company Committee is here in the inspection work. The same question: “Do you see the return to work reasonable?” Her face lights up with an ironic smile: “This is prevention of non-prevention.” Considers that the decision, in general, makes no sense: “We have to be at home all day to avoid any risk of contamination, but we have to go to the factories between us and then assume the risk of infection from our families.”

As for Michelin, it believes that the owners reacted quickly at the beginning of the crisis, closing the company, but that production has now been restarted too quickly. He says that the company has worked and worked on the safety measures. It has produced a written material detailing the obligations of the company and the workers, the spaces have been remodelled and the working method of each post has been adapted according to the security measures. In addition, it has provided each worker with a safety equipment: a pot of hydroalcoholic gel and disinfectant and a plastic mask that the company itself has made by adapting its own machinery to cover the whole face (seen in the photos accompanying the report). But he doesn't have much confidence in the effectiveness of all of this. “It may be, at first, yes, but as the days go by, everything will relax.” The safety criteria mean lengthening and slowing the work, and on behalf of the LAB trade unionist, over time, “if what you should do in three steps you will do in two steps, you will do it in two steps.”

Responsible undertaking; responsibility of workers

If the CCOO representative has placed the emphasis on the responsibility of workers, the LAB representative has criticised the company for leaving the responsibility to workers. The director of the company sent a message to the workers last Monday. “Without pretending to be perfect, we ask for an active involvement to respect the protocol; we are all key agents. Now more than ever the priority is PREVENTION and not manufacturing,” says the director. Part of workers' wages depends on the amount of tyres produced, and safety measures require production to be slowed down. That is why workers have asked for wages to be decoupled from productivity and for the salary of the previous two months to be used as a reference. The company has not accepted it.

The director explains to the workers that the return to production is a consequence of social responsibility: “The company has demonstrated its responsibility with the closure of the activity, prioritizing the safety of people. Now it’s time to come back, to meet the needs of our customers, who need our tires to maintain fundamental activities for the whole of society.” The LAB representative does not agree very much: “We are told that tyres are essential, for example, for trucks that are distributing food. But with those who are there we have left the wheels in the warehouse to meet that need.”

The LAB representative moves to the plant to review the situation. We approached the hut and asked the security police if we could take a picture while we took the temperature. “Wait a bit, so you can’t pull me out,” he says, and he puts the plastic mask on the face you had attached. “He’s making me a wound on my forehead, it hurts me,” he explains after the photo. He's put the mask back on us, and he's shown us the reddened forehead, and before I realized it, we've gotten closer to less than a meter to see the trail that's left the mask.

I went home in the car. No police had to come and go, even if the traffic was considerable. Eye-catching, at a time when we are constantly being reminded of the importance of complying with containment and security measures, to ensure that at a time when the police are squeezing out on the street. In industrial sites there is no police, and in plants the health inspection of the institutions (Osalan) has been suspended. Stop.