- The head of ELA, Txomin Lasa, has denounced that the new decree presented by the Basque Government has worsened the situation for people working in residences. He says that the plans agreed with the employers by the unions have been complicated by the institutions.
On July 31, 2019, the Basque Government presented a new decree on the workload of residential workers. The Decree sought to establish new ratios and measures to measure the number of workers and the number of working hours in each residence.
Coinciding with the beginning of the academic year, the Basque Parliament carried out the decree on 9 September. EH Bildu tabled a motion against the decree, which was approved with the votes in favour of the parliamentary groups of pp and Elkarrekin Podemos. Some specific points of the motion are currently being revised.
Txomin Lasa, head of the ELA trade union, says that the term “institutional abuse” can be used: “Ratios, for example, offer workers working conditions lower than those offered by the agreement they had signed since 1998”. As he explained, this Decree can be applied by the Foreign Ministers in a different way. “The workers in Gipuzkoa are better off than those in Bizkaia and Álava, but they still have to “improve”.
Gipuzkoa workers strike
In particular, workers in residences and day centres in Gipuzkoa will begin the 31-day strike on 11 November. Lasa has declared that ELA is going to strike its forces and has described as "positive" that the opposition parliamentary groups have made a "reprimand" to the Basque Government on the decree.