A labour dispute has landed at Camp Nou less than three days before Barcelona host Real Madrid.
Around 60 of the club’s permanent seasonal workers walked off the job at midnight on Friday, with the stoppage set to run until 6am on Monday. The timing is deliberate: it covers every matchday Barcelona had scheduled this weekend.
The group involved is Barcelona’s “fixed-discontinuous” staff, the operational employees hired on recurring contracts to run matchdays across the club’s venues. Their central demand is that the workforce be lifted from around 60 to around 90, a 50% increase, Yahoo Sports reported.
The strike committee framed the walkout as a last resort.
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“We warn that this situation is undermining service standards, reducing the ability to respond to incidents and harming the service provided to members and supporters,” the committee said in a statement cited by Yahoo Sports.
“We consider this industrial action to be a last resort in the face of a lack of progress and concrete commitments.”
Beyond staffing, the workers cite the “failure to honour agreements, contractual irregularities, and instances of discrimination between male and female staff at the same club.” A conciliation meeting at the Catalan Labour Tribunal on Thursday failed to produce an agreement, beIN Sports reported.
Barcelona promise all matches go ahead
Hansi Flick’s team will face Real Madrid as planned, the club insist. Barcelona sources said they have “sufficient organisational capacity to deal with any issues that may arise during the strike” and can “guarantee the fixtures without using replacement staffing practices that would violate labour laws,” according to beIN Sports.
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The club also maintains its employees are paid above industry standards and that talks with the strike committee will continue.
Four venues under the stoppage
The dispute reaches well beyond Sunday’s headline match. Barcelona’s commitment to carry on covers Spotify Camp Nou, the Estadi Johan Cruyff, the Palau Blaugrana and the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper training ground, per Barca Universal.
Kick-off between Barcelona and Real Madrid is at 9pm local time on Sunday at Spotify Camp Nou.
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