ELA, CIG and CSC announce mobilisations for the 25th of March to demand the derogation of the labour reform and to stop collective redundancies

At a joint press conference, ELA, CIG and CSC transmitted the need to promote a clear social agenda that involves reversing the pension and labour reforms. The General Secretaries of the three trade unions, Mitxel Lakuntza, Paulo Carril and Sergi Perelló, respectively, appeared in a telematic appearance.

They consider it urgent to derogate the labour reforms in order to acknowledge the right to negotiate working conditions in their respective countries, derogating the collective bargaining reforms that have fuelled the nationalisation of labour relations and that have worsened job insecurity and low salaries. Accordingly, they repeat that there are no excuses for not developing collective bargaining in Euskal Herria, Galicia and Catalonia.

Lakuntza referred to the collective bargaining structure that gives priority to State agreements over provincial ones and to the deterioration of the sectorial agreements in companies, all of which ,without the trade unions, (which democratically represent the workers), having their possibility of making agreements about the working conditions in any sector being recognised.

For ELA, the statements given by spokespeople from Sánchez’s Government in favour of some specific changes in the reform instead of derogating it, as they had promised when they were in the opposition, are a sample of their “lack of consistency” and “a cheek.”

For Lakuntza "the pandemic cannot be used as an excuse” and a way out of the crisis that allows employment to be saved is at stake.

Likewise, ELA, CIG and CSC are asking the political parties of Euskal Herria, Galicia and Catalonia to take steps to derogate the labour reform and to bring a halt to the mass redundancies in this crisis, at the same time as announcing mobilisations for the 25th of March in the three regions.