In fact, delegates are divided differently; for example, to obtain a delegate among teachers, 102 votes are needed, 15 among religious teachers and 20 among service workers. Well, this is not a matter for the winners and the losers, but there have been many doubts in the centres, and that is why we feel it is important that this issue should appear in the media.

For STEILAS the results are historic, because our union has achieved the greatest support a union has ever achieved in public education. The workers have carved their careers over the past four years and, at the same time, we have received a great boost for the next four years. We have recovered!

The union has just turned 40, but it did not start from scratch, because there has long been an emancipating tradition that has given importance to education. Education has come a long way; it has gone from being a privilege of a few to being universal, but we cannot forget that it remains a space for struggle. That is why, in recent years, we have maintained the model of coherence and syndicalism maintained for decades: collaboration of the majority of trade unions in collective bargaining, centrality of the system in the Public School, social justice, fight against the heteropatriarchy and sovereignty.

So, at STEILAS, those lines of work that have been our foundation, we've done them in the day-to-day syndicalism: four years ago against LOMCE.

We were in struggle, and among other things, along with many other agents, we made a guide to deal with LOMCE and build our own education in Euskal Herria. Later, together with ELA and LAB, but at the initiative of STEILAS, we started the struggle to improve working conditions in non-university education and has not been a sterile competition. Among them, we have promoted numerous initiatives in favour of Public Education and against segregation and educational privatisation. On the other hand, we have published several publications: educational units on November 25, March 8 and May 17, guide to gender and sexual diversity, guide to inclusive communication, education and languages in a globalized school, feminist pedagogy, evaluation... Another example of this has been the documentary Hezkuntza Truke, which has put at the centre many of the debates that a people has to address in order to build their own educational system.

However, we still have many challenges for the next four years. The trade union model needs in-depth analysis to encourage the participation of workers and make them more effective in our daily lives. The Basque trade unionism is immersed in a complex knot that is difficult to release. However, on September 4, 2017, when ELA and LAB published the document -- For a Social Process of Unilateral Sovereignty, we saw a ray of light. We are now calling on both trade unions to develop what is contained in it and to make a firm commitment to it. STEILAS is ready to give the necessary impetus from its humility. “To set in motion a process of unilateral sovereignty with a clear social content that allows society as a whole, and especially the working class, to defend a new political and institutional status that allows its achievement”. That was the compromise contained in that document and it is time to address it! In the present situation, we will hardly be able to make progress in this country...

The importance of education for the development of these social contents is unquestionable. Thus, our union is clear that for the transmission of Basque culture and language, to guarantee social justice and to advance as a people it is necessary that the Public School be the axis of the system. STEILAS reaffirms its firm commitment to continue to defend, expand and strengthen the Basque Public School in Lekeitio, Labastida, Etxarri, Lesaka, Ordizia and Hendaia. The people who make up the trade union majority continue to sign in the program of the Social Rights Charter of the Basque Country; that is, we cover all the places that are requested in the public network for free, both in section 0-3, and in the other educational stages, including the university.

With regard to union action and the fight for social justice, on the road to improving the working conditions of women workers in education and the cessation of the privatization dynamics, we see the need to maintain and expand the spaces of confrontation. The educational policies of the governments of the CAV and Navarre force us to have all the red alarms on!

Finally, in Navarre there are also the public education elections and we have an important milestone on 22 May. We hope to remain the union with the most support in the public education of Hego Euskal Herria. Voice and vote are held by the workers. We, meanwhile, will continue to work from center to center, at the service of workers, always working on the development of the social change project of Euskal Herria. Steilas colleague Rikardo Arrangi, as has been said once, works in a trade union like STEILAS, which is the most poetic thing in the world.

Ana Pérez Pérez
Nagore Iturrioz López
Aitor Idigoras Lasaga (members
of STEILAS)