ELA, CIG, LAB y CSC have held a round of meetings with the political parties in the Spanish Congress

The meetings in the Congress were framed by the joint dynamics that the four trade unions from three State-less nations started with their statement given in Bilbao on the 5th of February. The top representatives of ELA, CIG, LAB and CSC (Mitxel Lakuntza, Paulo Carril, Garbiñe Aranburu and Carlos Sastre, respectively), took part in these meetings with PSOE, ERC, JxCAT, PNV, EH Bildu, BNG and CUP.

The trade unions have transmitted the need to promote an unambiguous social agenda that involves repealing the pension and labour reforms, at the same time as recalling the need to move forward on the broad democratising agenda, immediately repealing the ‘Ley Mordaza’ or Gag Rule and article 315.3 of the Criminal Code that criminalises social and trade union movement (strikes). In the same direction, they passed on the fact that politics must be used first to resolve any national conflicts that arise between our nations and the State.

The right to decide on the labour relations model, pensions and the social protection system in their respective territories have all been added to these demands.

The four trade unions put a special emphasis on the urgency of the need to repeal the labour reforms to acknowledge the right to negotiate work conditions in their respective countries, repealing the reforms in collective bargaining that have bolstered the nationalisation of labour relations and that have worsened job insecurity and low salaries.

Likewise, they reminded these political parties of the need and the importance of upholding their correlation of forces in the new parliamentary representation to push these changes forward.

"We want to negotiate in the Basque Country"

Mitxel Lakuntza, general secretary of ELA, underscored that the meeting had two goals. “The first one was to provide continuity to the joint statement that ELA, CIG, LAB and CSC signed on the 5th of February in Bilbao. And secondly, to share a diagnosis with the political parties from our respective countries, Euskal Herria, Catalonia and Galicia. We urged these political parties to uphold their correlation of forces in the Spanish Parliament in order to, amongst other things, repeal the labour reforms of 2010, 2011 and 2012."

"We have made it clear that our goal is for the workers in Euskal Herria to be able to negotiate the working conditions here, without these being imposed on us by the State. This is a central topic for ELA and we wanted to establish a series of red lines. There are no excuses to stop us from developing collective bargaining in the Basque Country, and we are going to carry on fighting until we achieve it."