With a banner with “decent working conditions for all workers in Tabakalera”, last Wednesday a number of workers from the Donostia/San Sebastián International Centre for Contemporary Culture were concentrated. It has been two months since the mediators of the Ubik creation library began the strike, denouncing among other problems the existence of low wages and hours that do not allow to conciliate.

The solution does not seem to be close, and in the meantime, one of the star services in Tabakalera is closed, as the successful firm, Sedena, has put “insulting” approaches to the negotiating table for the time being, according to the strikers, who asked them not to mobilize in the next four years in exchange for a wage hike. This labor conflict is evidencing a problem that goes beyond Ubik, as other services in the same center also work by subcontracting. Outside the library there is also precariousness.

History will be known to other cultural workers who have had much to talk about in recent weeks: the actors who make films in Euskera announced at the end of January that they will not double more films within the ZINEMA Euskaraz program. Last September, the company Mixer won the ETB’s public doubling competition, “offering the cheapest price”, as explained by the Association of Basque Bending Companies Bieuse. He then lowered the salary to the doubles, which in five years has reduced them by 35%. And most of the professionals, rejecting the reduction, started the unemployment.

This is not a new issue, but a repetition of what has happened in many sectors: the institutions make public services available to private companies, the companies took to obtain the award, they put prices on the land, the people pay first by lowering their conditions and then citizenship lowers the quality of the services they have paid with taxes or are interrupted by the labor conflicts that are generated.

Until recently, however, there has been a difference between workers from other areas and those engaged in the cultural sectors: that their precariousness has been half concealed, that it was not publicly manifested, perhaps because their profession does not coincide with what we normally consider as a working class. The demands of the professionals of Ubik and Dubbing confirm that this limit is being shifted. And taking into account the struggles of the workers of these services that are multiplying in recent years – strikes by the Musas del Guggenheim and the Fine Arts of Bilbao, the Azkuna Zentroa, the Euskalduna, improvements achieved by the workers of the CBA cultural centre of Irun… –, others may arise if the current model is not modified.