We demand that employers and the Department of Education begin to act responsibly and that, in response to the demands of the workers, decisions and approaches are made.

Today's day is the 26th day of strike that has taken place in the last two courses and the 23rd of this course. And today, the support he has had has been very broad. Once again, around 3,500 workers have met today at the Bilbao event, as a sign of the widespread discontent experienced in educational establishments by the worsening working conditions. In fact, the workers in this sector have not renewed our agreement for 10 years.

The unions ELA, STEILAS, CCOO, LAB and UGT reaffirm themselves in the objective of reaching consensus that provide an adequate solution to the situation, lead to negotiation and give a serious response to the demands of the workers. To this end, we have taken every step in recent years, and especially in recent months.

However, the employer is not acting responsibly and is showing a manifest lack of will in response to the workers' demands to solve this conflict. Despite the fact that in the bilateral meetings held with the trade unions after 8 days of strike in January he made approaches that could allow agreements to be reached, at the table on 25 March he rejected these approaches and presented as definitive and unalterable the proposal put forward at that table; although the trade unions had sent him a document with the keys to reaching agreements, he did not even reply to the meeting that the trade unions had decided to do in order to resolve the conflict.

Following the April strikes, we have transferred to the employers our intention to redirect the situation and reach agreements.

But once again, the employers have acted in bad faith. Thus, on the eve of the strike in schools, it has published a proposal that has not yet been passed on to all the unions, without any union having responded to the proposal. In view of the scope of the proposal, it is clear that the employer has again acted with the sole aim of deactivating mobilisations and strikes without responding to the demands of the workers, rather than the real consensus in search of confusion and ruptures between workers, representatives and trade unions.

And that is that the proposal, despite having some change in the salary approach, goes in the same vein as the one on the table on 25 March in some key approaches such as linking wages to the financing of workers in the sector or setting up a system that makes it impossible for them to negotiate. There is no progress on the other issues.

The Department of Education, for its part, has shown absolute irresponsibility in resolving this conflict and is not complying with Parliament’s request to become involved in the settlement of the conflict in February. Their involvement has been limited to meeting with the unions, at their request and only after 18 days of strike in the sector; although we transferred 4 years ago to Education and the employers an approach to relocating workers who may lose their jobs by closing classrooms, the Department of Education has not taken any steps until two months ago to start talking about this issue; and the steps taken today have been limited as a relocation.

In this way, the trade unions are bringing together different parliamentary groups to call on the Department of Education to fulfil the task entrusted to us by Parliament.

The unions ELA, STEILAS, CCOO, LAB and UGT are calling on both employers and the Department of Education to assume their responsibilities and, once and for all, to take the necessary measures and decisions to find a satisfactory solution to this conflict for the benefit of workers, families and students.

Finally, we would like to congratulate the workers on the firmness, strength and conviction they have demonstrated once again. It is a pride that there are workers in our centres who have chosen to fight for these working conditions in the face of the deterioration of working conditions that directly affect the educational quality of our centres.

In the Basque Country on May 8, 2019.

Main demands for a new convention

Employment:

Agreement for the maintenance of employment and the relocation of personnel affected by the possible closure of classrooms.

Wages:

Recovery of purchasing power.

Salary equalization of teaching staff from 1 ESO and 2 ESO.

Working hours and workloads:

In the case of the faculty, reserve additional hours for the preparation of the classes and monitoring of the students, as well as the recognition of 70 hours of non-face-to-face dedication per year.

Reduction of working hours for Administration and Services staff.

Agree on the irregular distribution of the day in Vocational Training.

Improve the working conditions of particularly precarious and feminized groups.

Educational support specialists: recognition of their work as educational, dedicate additional hours for the preparation of the work and monitoring of the students, as well as the regular distribution of the day between 1 September and 30 June

First cycle child education personnel: consideration of their work as educational, reduction of working hours, complementary hours for the preparation of the work and monitoring of the students.