Unions and employers end the meeting without an agreement and the February strikes continue

The meeting between ELA, LAB, CC. OO., UGT and Steilas and the employers’ associations Kristau Eskola and AICE-IZEA concluded the meeting on the agreement in the Social Initiative Education centers without an agreement, so that the unions maintain the five strikes planned for February.

The meeting started around 1 p.m. at the CRL headquarters in Bilbao and took place after the cycle of strikes that the plants carried out in January (17, 18, 23, 24 and 25 January) after failing to reach an agreement . previously held meetings.

Finally, the meeting, in which the employers presented a new proposal that they described as “ambitious”, concluded in such a way that the unions maintained the planned strikes for the coming days. February 6, 7, 8, 19 and 20. “They leave us no choice but to continue with the strikes,” ELA noted.

Both sides have tried to forge closer positions on an agreement after the previous one expired in 2021 and affected 9,000 workers.

Kristau-Eskola has expressed the intention to continue negotiating and has asked the unions to be realistic. For its part, ELA has stated that the proposal is almost identical to the last one presented, except that they have offered a reduction in the annual working day between ten and twenty hours for the most feminized sectors.

For his part, Steilas has asked employers’ organizations to stop “artificially keeping the conflict open” and CCOO believes that mobilization will be the fundamental step to be able to make progress on the points where it is “key” to be able to to make progress. channel the conflict.

From UGT they have indicated that they are also maintaining the mobilizations because they find the presented proposal “insufficient”, although they appreciate “its progress”.