Around 150,000 Basque civil servants are called to strike, both today and on December 19, to demand improvements in their working conditions and the quality of public services. The organizing unions have highlighted, in a first assessment, that it is having a "very broad" follow-up. The Basque Government, meanwhile, has responded to this call through the Vice President and Security Councilor, Josu Erkoreka, who has indicated that there is an attempt to cause an image of "chaos" in Euskadi during this pre-electoral period.
The call for this double day of strike has been signed by ELA, LAB, CC.OO., Steilas, ESK and other unions, most of them except UGT. According to these centers, during the first hours the follow-up of the strike has been “almost total” in the public media and in transportation, while it has been “majority” in non-university and university public education (in Education as well). There was a strike day this Tuesday). Likewise, they have indicated that it has been “very broad” in the city councils and the provincial councils.
In the Administration of Justice, meanwhile, they have spoken of “important” monitoring, although “unequal”, while in the State Administration they have described the monitoring as “minor”. Regarding the Basque Health Service-Osakidetza, they have indicated that minimum services "totally" condition the follow-up of the strike.
The minimum services planned for the strike provide that in Primary Care work will be done as on a Saturday, in education that schools will be open and there will be a director and a teacher, and in transportation that 30% of the services will circulate.
The convening unions have criticized, once again, the "deterioration" of the public sector in Euskadi and have indicated that it is "increasingly privatized."
In this sense, they have demanded "the Basque Government, the provincial councils and the city councils to guarantee purchasing power and consolidate public employment until temporary employment is reduced from 40% to 8%."
The unions also demand that the salaries and needs of the public sector be agreed in Euskadi; They demand the recovery of lost purchasing power, which they estimate at 20% in the last decade; the end of privatizations, and plans to guarantee a "real" Basque language of the Administration.
The unions will mobilize this afternoon in the capitals of the Autonomous Community of Euskadi.
Meanwhile, the first vice-lehendakari and Security Councilor, Josu Erkoreka, has responded to the organizers, in an interview with Onda Vasca, pointing out that he is "very struck" by the fact that a strike has been called for the entire public sector, having take into account that "there are enormously heterogeneous and completely different situations, which have nothing to do with each other".
"To expect that everyone in unison, from such different situations, will tune in to a specific message that justifies the strike seems to me to be an unattainable goal, because the public sector is very large and the situations that arise are enormously heterogeneous," he said. insisted.
Erkoreka has also questioned the “paradox” that, contrary to “what happened in the past”, “a growing sector of the population aspires to public service, to public employment, and as soon as they access public employment they are already "He finds himself immediately dissatisfied, and begins to raise claims and demands when his life aspiration was to access public office."
