Bakery stops opening on Sundays: the cost of paying too little

Bakery stops opening on Sundays: the cost of paying too little

After 70 years of opening Monday to Sunday, the Villímar bakery has decided to stop baking its wood-fired bread on Sundays from 19 October. The reason given: it cannot find workers for the 3 a.m. to 10 a.m. shift. The baker's remark that "workers these days tire quickly" sums up her diagnosis. But the data point to a different reading.

A 7-hour-a-week contract at union-scale pay

The job on offer is, in fact, a contract for just one day a week, Sunday, with a schedule that requires getting up at half past two in the morning. That is 7 hours a week, a job that can hardly support anyone. In the public debate, the recurring question is how much that effort pays. If the wage is close to the minimum wage, the equation is simple: it is not worth it. As has been pointed out, paying 20 euros an hour would change the picture, but then the business would no longer be profitable. A family bakery cannot compete with other offers that provide better conditions without pre-dawn starts.

Labour shortage or lack of incentives?

Spain's unemployment figures do not match the supposed shortage of workers. While the bakery cannot find anyone, in Seville there are 140 applicants for two openings as an animal carcass incinerator operator. The difference lies in the type of contract and the pay. Precarious jobs, with unsociable hours and low wages, are finding fewer and fewer candidates. The younger generation, better educated and with different expectations, rejects jobs that do not allow them to make a living. It is not that they do not want to work; it is that they do not want to work in conditions that do not pay off.

The cost of not paying a fair wage

A traditional bakery closing on Sundays is a symptom of a broader problem: the difficulty of finding labour for hard, poorly paid work. Meanwhile, other businesses, such as that of the Senegalese baker thriving in Granada, show that the trade can survive if it adapts. The underlying question is whether the Spanish labour market is failing to allocate wages properly or whether the work ethic has faded. The answer probably lies somewhere in between, but in the meantime, Sunday bread goes unbaked. How much longer can family bakeries keep up the pace? The question remains open.