Doble Amor is a well-known and respected non-profit association in Benidorm. It was created in 1971, it manages a school for disabled children and has an occupational center that cares for people with intellectual disabilities that is mainly supported by subsidies from the Department of Social Welfare, complemented by aid from the city councils, not only Benidorm, but others from the Marina Baixa.
Dependent on this association, a specialized industrial laundry operated that since 1981, when it was founded with six workers, LIDA (Double Love Industrial Laundry) was growing, linked to the hospitality business so flourishing in the area, expanding its activity and its staff to suit that the hotels and restaurants that made up the bulk of their clientele did. But covid arrived and things changed
Like so many businesses related to tourist activity, the stoppage of activity hit the laundry squarely, which was forced to temporarily close, with the consequent impact on the 32 employees who, some with more than 40 years of experience in the company, were forced to stay at home.
However, while hotels and restaurants recover their pre-pandemic activity, month after month they break occupancy records and even have problems filling their staff due to the shortage of labor in the sector, this group of especially vulnerable people, who They are between 23 and 62 years old, they see how the company they depended on has closed its doors, apparently, forever.
The legal problem that arises is that, as legal advisors of some affected people explain to La Vanguardia, the laundry managers took advantage of a decree during the closure period according to which from 2020 the special employment centers - such as the case - had to be corporately separated from the non-profit association that created them. In this corporate change, the employees signed new contracts in which they lose their previous permanent status and become permanent-discontinuous.
Given the impossibility of continuing its activity, the LIDA company declared bankruptcy. Legal sources that advise the workers affirm that an order from the Commercial Court of Alicante that hears this matter has determined that the workers have the right to be relocated to the company and collect the wages not received, since their contracts are not considered extinct, something that this newspaper has not yet been able to verify.
In fact, the workers received a letter to show up at the workplace last week, which they all did, although those responsible for the firm limited themselves to registering their presence but did not allow them access to the facilities.
Although the precise conditions of each individual are diverse, in any case they are people with some degree of intellectual disability who therefore have added difficulties in finding a job alternative.
Regardless of whether the legal dispute is finally resolved in one way or another, whether or not they receive the amounts they claim, the hope that things in the laundry will return to what they were is fading, and the only certainty for the moment is the uncertainty that affects a group of especially vulnerable people
