ELA launches a tough campaign against LAB. "In practice there is an alliance between LAB, CCOO and UGT that deactivates conflicts," says the secretary general, when we have more conflicts than ever before. "ALS stands firm with its principles, LAB has sinned." Let reality not spoil the headlines! There's only one smuggling, ALS is the real left. The arrogance, although a bad friend to make assessments, serves to reinforce the apparent radicalism.

Syndicalism is not built from the pulpit, from coherence, but working day by day in business. That is why we have to put things in place. From the responsibility, the direction taken by ELA weakens the counter-union of sovereignty and, consequently, the working class of the Basque Country.

We have great challenges in our hands, as a people and as a working class. In this context, LAB replaces the new trade unionism. We developed our praxis with socio-political syndicalism, linked to a national project and a coherent socio-union model. That doesn't like ALS and behaves irresponsibly.

Constructive syndicalism is not carried out by the personal stamp of concepts or by cloning the practices already developed. LAB has been rethinking trade unionism for years. Feminism, ecosocialism or antirazism are fundamental elements in our daily work. They are not inalienable concepts, every social agent can and should contribute. However, ELA patents these concepts, puts another different cellophane and is always ready to sell the product for the benefit of corporate interests.

The LAB project has emerged and developed against the current trend since its birth in 1974. While ELA had the blessing of the Party, LAB militancy was pushing for a pro-independence project based on the counter-apoder without sweating.

In the 1990s, ELA approached the contraband model that LAB developed from the standpoint of sovereignty, not in vain, marking its traditions: confrontation yes, but not from the standpoint of class, but as a union; hegemonic mentality (with me or against me); dance between radical discourse and the often conservative practice (all the characteristics of a local order); respect for legality.

In any case, the modification of ALS meant the opportunity to build a strong alliance that was contraband in the workplace and that was active in the process of national liberation. Two main attempts have been made to boost the action unit between LAB and ELA (1994-2000 and 2015-2020). They both fail. Why? In the face of ELA's interested report, we will focus, from the point of view of LAB, on the facts that have impeded progress in this unit:

In the political sphere, according to ELA, the armed struggle prevented progress in the unity of action; without armed struggle, they said, they would enter into a strategy of sovereign confrontation. Those promises are dragged by the wind. ELA has been adapting its theoretical theses, from the relativization of the importance of being a State of its own to the abstract claim of an Independent Basque Republic. At the same time, it renounces the struggle to create State instruments in the socio-occupational field.

It is a comfortable and sterile attitude to wait for it to be agreed in the Social Dialogue of the State or for the Spanish Government to decide and then criticise the impositions. The Basque Area of Labor Relations and Social Protection for ALS is a slogan. It acts without the ability to promote initiatives that contribute to nurturing sovereign pedagogy.

In 2013, they rejected the negotiation of the Intersectoral Agreement to shield collective bargaining and strongly criticized LAB. Four years later, the agreement previously negotiated by the others was presented as its own. Recently, faithful to their daily practice, they have turned their backs on the possibility of boosting a minimum wage of EUR 1,400.

ELA has raised the tone of criticism to the "Basque left", when many of its affiliates continue to vote PNV and Geroa Bai. He has called for disobedience from others while, in solidarity with Catalonia, he refused to call for two hours of unemployment. The reason? Risk of illegality with a political call.

ELA wanted to impose on LAB its model in the trade union sphere. While analysing the union coherence of others, he seeks and works on privileged channels of dialogue with the employers, mainly with Adegi, without mobilization to conclude agreements. It has been left out of the trade unions with a strike and mobilization agenda, in the majority agreements we have seen to give in to the lockdown of the employers, especially in feminized and precarious sectors. It has also been extracted from the response protocol to occupational accidents.

Therefore, ALS does not seek false justification for the ineffectiveness of the alliance with LAB. We firmly believe in the need to join forces: to advance rights and social justice, with the socialist horizon; to activate a sovereign strategy that favors social transformation. With ELA, today, it is impossible to lay the foundations for sharing diagnosis, trust, commitment, objectives and strategy, so that the Basque syndicalism is a protagonist of Basque society in a common ground. We have always looked and will look at the people, the Basque Country and the Basque working class in a face-to-face and generous manner. We are not conditioned by the acronyms, or the structure, but by the future of our people. We will be able to meet the day that ELA changes its priorities.