The Basque Government made the grandiose announcement that it will allocate 283 million euros over the next two years to eliminate the wage gap. But this strategic plan announced by the Basque Government is insufficient and does not touch the root of the problem; therefore it will be difficult to manage to eradicate it. Additionally, some of the steps included in its proposal are presented as if they had come from ELA. But let us take this opportunity to say loud and clear: our trade union has not taken part in the aforementioned process. On the 16th of April, 2018, ELA presented a document with 32 steps to tackle the wage gap and it sent copies to the Basque Government and to Emakunde. The Basque Government and the Employment Minister did not even deign to answer us. Therefore, our valuation of the attitude of the Autonomous Government is negative.

ELA’s National Committee will put forward Mitxel Lakuntza to take over from Txiki Muñoz as the new general secretary of the trade union. As should be remembered, Txiki Muñoz’s term ends in 2019 due to reasons of his age, as marked out by the organisation’s statutes. With this in mind, it is up to the National Committee (the body that joins the Executive Committee and the people in charge of the regions and the federations), to put forward a nomination, in this case specifically, Mitxel Lakuntza.

The goal proposed by ELA at the beginning of the legislature was the democratisation of bodies participating in the institutions. The Government has brought an end to the anti-democratic exclusion suffered by ELA and LAB and the participation of the trade unions in the Occupational Health area has been opened up. Although in the beginning, some decisions were made (improvement in training of the prevention delegates), it was soon obvious that the Government did not have a firm position regarding modifying occupational health policies. We have not managed to make the Occupational Health Council useful for improving the living conditions of the working classes.

When analysing the distribution of revenue, we have several indexes, indicators, ratios, etc. to use. In this case, the tool that we will use will be that of analysing the evolution of the weight of work revenue and of capital with respect to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP); to do this, we will use the statistics provided by Estate. In spite of having only partial information, it will show how the capitalist accumulation increases the differences between the revenues. ELA has indicated that if the salaries had been maintained in 2017, the weight that they had on the Gross Domestic Product of 2009, would increase by 2,000 million in the ACBC.

The statement was written by trade unionists (amongst whom was ELA) and climate justice activists, meeting in Lisbon from the 22nd to the 25th of November, due to the initiative by the Portuguese Campaign for Seasonal Jobs and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. The text was launched at the closing session of the 4th International Ecosocialist Meetings.

ELA is reporting the San Sebastian company, Eraiki Prest after a Portuguese worker who resided in Guipuzcoa was involved in a fatal work accident in Germany. This is the report that is included in the latest Landeia on the subject.

ELA understands that this wage gap is not coincidental and it responds to an exclusively gender-based reason. The most female-dominated sectors are the ones that suffer from the worst salaries and the most precarious contracts (part-time contracts), amongst other questions. In the cleaning sector, salary differences in some cases can reach figures of between 3,500 and 6,000 euros, depending on agreements and territories, which is translated into salaries that are 35% lower.