The unions ELA, LAB, ESK, Steilas, EHNE, Etxalde and CGT and the agents included in the Feminist Movement of Euskal Herria have called for this Thursday a feminist general strike in Euskadi and Navarra, under the motto “For the collective right to care” and in order to demand “a “public and community” care system. The convening groups have highlighted, early in the morning, the “extensive follow-up” that it is having at its beginning. The institutions have not yet offered official data.
Specifically, the organizing unions and the Feminist Movement have indicated that the follow-up to the strike “is being significant” in public services, with a “very broad” impact on Eusko Tren and Metro Bilbao.
In non-university and university public education, they estimate that the strike will have a wide following among those who have the right to strike. The call will affect 600 public education centers. At the university, activity will be practically paralyzed on campus, as indicated. Likewise, they provide for extensive monitoring in subsidized and community centers.
At the municipal level, they indicate that the monitoring of the strike will be extensive, especially in Gipuzkoa, where practically all city councils have joined the strike “in a very generalized way.”
In the Social Welfare and health services, the established minimum services “will totally condition the follow-up of the strike” and they have denounced that thousands of workers “have been denied the right to strike, in many cases with 100% minimum services”.
In Health, they have indicated that, in primary care, the strike will have a broader follow-up with the closure of some outpatient clinics and they also expect a wide impact on home help.
Likewise, they have stressed that the strike has had an important following in the industry, especially in Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia, the strike especially affects the industry of Lea Artibai and Duranguesado.
As they have explained, this general feminist strike has the objective “of emptying the workplaces and taking to the streets” and hundreds of mobilizations organized by the Strike Committees of towns and neighborhoods have already been launched.
The organizers assure that they want to take to the streets to demand “a public and community care system, for the construction of the collective right to care” and to denounce “privatization and commercialization.”
The mobilization will defend the rights of women who live “in unacceptable conditions performing care tasks and in feminized sectors,” to demand “responsibility from those who maintain the current system.”
Two people, participants in an information picket of the feminist strike, have been arrested this morning for public disorder in incidents that have occurred in the vicinity of Mercedes in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Economy and Finance of the Basque Government, Pedro Azpiazu, has expressed his respect for the exercise of the strike, although he has expressed the opinion that we should try to “balance” the mobilizations and “the harm” caused to citizens.
“People have the right to demonstrate, to go on strike and do whatever they want. However, the distortions and problems they generate for the rest of the population are very important, which could be quantified in economic and personal damages that we should try to avoid” , he pointed out.
