萬翔英日語 甲子林語言認證中心

Spain’s burnt out ’babysitter grandparents’ urged to strike -----西班牙呼籲累壞的「保母祖父母」罷工

  A call has gone out for grandparents around Spain to down tools recently and go on strike - because they’re sick to the teeth of all that childcare.

  For a country where half of all grandparents look after their grandchildren every day – one in eight for more than nine hours a day – the strike call threatens to disrupt the working lives of a significant proportion of the population and expose the extent to which this unpaid work is propping up the economy.

  "We want grandparents to strike to prove they are a key part of the way this country functions," said Manuel Pastrana, leader of the UGT general workers’ union in the southern region of Andalucia. "Learn to say no" and "don’t feel guilty" are the slogans, aimed at so-called "babysitter grandparents".

  The call is part of a wider attempt to bring the country to a halt with a general strike. But it has also struck at one of the key elements of Spanish society – where grandparents provide the childcare that working parents cannot give and the state does not offer.

  "It is a growing problem because grandparents are cheaper than childminders and they are an easy option when the economy is as bad as it is now," said Dr Jaime Rodriguez, of Spain’s Society of Gerontology. "That is probably fine for most of them, but some cannot cope."

辭典

burnt-out（或burned-out）： 形容詞，指精疲力竭，尤指因工作或長期壓力而感到疲憊不堪的，如She was burned-out before she was 30. （不到30歲她就已身心俱疲。）

down tools：片語（主要為英國及澳洲用語），指拒絕繼續工作，尤指對薪資或工作條件不滿的情況，如Thousands of Krakow steelworkers downed tools to demand more pay.（數千名克拉科夫的鋼鐵廠工人為要求加薪而罷工。）

be fed up/sick to the back teeth： 片語（主要為英國或澳洲非正式用語），指對某情況拖延太久或對某事一再被討論感到厭煩或生氣，如He’s been treating me badly for two years and, basically, I’m fed up to the back teeth with it. （他惡整我已經兩年了，老實說我已經忍無可忍。）

中文翻譯：

    西班牙全國各地的祖父母最近被呼籲停止工作，開始罷工，因為他們對照顧小孩已經厭煩到極點。對於一個半數祖父母都得每天照顧孫兒的國家而言──8分之1的祖父母每天當保母的時間超過9小時──這項罷工號召可能威脅到全國大部份人口的正常職場生活，同時也暴露出這份無給職工作對支撐國家經濟的重要程度。

    「我們希望祖父母用罷工來證明他們是這個國家運作的關鍵環節，」西班牙南部安達魯西亞區總工會UGT領袖帕斯特拉納說。「學會說不」和「無須愧疚」則是罷工的標語，目標就是針對所謂的「保母祖父母」。

    這項號召是企圖讓西班牙全國陷入停頓的大罷工的一部份。但這項罷工計畫同時也擊中了西班牙社會重要元素之一──由祖父母們來提供因雙親必須工作無力負擔，但政府又不提供的兒童托育服務。

    「這個問題愈來愈嚴重，因為祖父母比保母便宜多了，而且在經濟像現在這麼糟糕的時候，祖父母是最容易的選擇，」西班牙老年醫學會的羅德里格茲博士說。「對多數祖父母而言或許沒問題，但有些祖父母可承受不了這種負擔。」