Last week we explained in this column “the state of Basque welfare”. We are now highlighting some shameful data to show how inadequate public employment is in the CAV. As a result of a trade union complaint, we have just learned that in Gipuzkoa two nursing assistants from Osakidetza aged 53 and 60 years have signed 215 and 197 temporary contracts in the last four years, respectively. ELA believes that Osakidetza is the largest temporary agency in the Basque Country (ETT), with a workforce of up to 14,000 workers and a time span of 40%. How many temporary contracts are there in other departments of the Basque Government and the foreign institutions? If these two workers have accumulated so many contracts, are their jobs not necessary for the proper functioning of public health?

Those who allocate hundreds of millions of euros to the benefit of private companies to anti-economic and anti-social projects of the TAV or public stadiums, who do not dare to carry out a fair tax reform, cannot excuse the lack of economic resources to maintain precarious employment. Let them say clearly: economic growth and tax reform at the service of precarious employment and of employers? Neither Osakidetza nor the Basque Government could become ETT, but today they seem to be the largest in the Basque Country.