Following the freezing of the convention since 2009, forty meetings, 29 stops, an endless number of demonstrations and a one-month strike have been necessary to reach an agreement on concerted education. The agreement, which affects 9,000 teachers and 107,000 students from Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Álava, has been made possible by the mediation that has taken place in the Labour Relations Council.

Two main subjects can be obtained. Why did it take nine years to update the convention? Why is it that only employers, private or public, move when strikes and mobilizations are announced? First subject: workers and trade unions call for a strike in the face of the moving attitude of the employers and the administration, who prefer to enrage the workers and make them give in. So they have finally moved, but when they have been struck on the table, not the one or two days, but the one of a month.

The second concerns the means by which staff can defend their rights. Once again, in the conflict of concerted education, as in that of residences, we are seeing that it is strikes and strong mobilisations that force employers and administrations to sign the agreement.

In the case of the agreements, it has been a shame to hear lehendakari and the Basque education counsellor that agreements have been reached “thanks to the dialogue that the Government has promoted”. In this long working conflict, politicians have looked elsewhere, against attacks that criminalized strikes and mobilizations. The one-month call for a strike has encouraged them all. The employers and the administration are responsible for creating these strikes, because they want the workers to put aside their demands.