Today, in Laudio, there are those accused of Metal, PCB, Petronor and Tubacex conflicts in Bizkaia. The initiative has focused on solidarity with Aintzane Mendia, a worker who will have to testify next Monday at the Court of Vitoria after being arrested on Tubacex’s indefinite strike.

The logic of Mendia is the same as that of other previous charges, as reported in the hearing: “The aim of these kinds of activities is to persecute, criminalize and frighten workers so that we do not confront the relentless employers who are daily opposed to the rights of the working class.”

In this regard, staff have emphasized that these cases are not isolated. They say that the employer has “close cooperation” with the Basque Government, which sends the Ertzaintza to “suppress legitimate protests” and then make cars “with the consequences as serious as those we denounce here today”.

Faced with this, workers accused of working conflicts have ensured that they have only defended employment and working conditions, and have claimed that the struggle is the “only mechanism to combat taxation, precariousness and poverty, and the increased capacity of pressure in the negotiation against employers”.

They consider the case of Aintzane Mendia to be a clear example of this: “We would like to recall that Tubacex said it was essential to dismiss 129 workers for the viability and future of the company. All that prevented these layoffs was the struggle and determination of the workers.”

The multinational has also talked about the profits announced last week for EUR 17 million. For the workers, this news “clearly demonstrates” that the company was liking, “and the most serious thing is that in the conflict the Basque Government and the institutions were in favor of the management by endorsing the leadership’s arguments and criminalizing and repressing the conflict.”

They also stress that Mendia is not the only judicial process associated with Tubacex’s indefinite strike. They have recalled that some Tubacex workers and some young people in the region have also had to declare, “with serious charges against them”: “Repression has no limits and wants to bring together the solidarity of all Aiaraldea, fundamental in the fight against collective dismissal”.

Mobilization in Gasteiz on Monday

Finally, the workers opened the call for mobilizations next Monday, November 7, before the Criminal Court No. 1 of Vitoria-Gasteiz at 10:30 hours under the motto “Aintzane with you, the struggle is not a crime”.