A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #336 - South Basque Country: Large mobilization for the general feminist strike of November 30 by Courant Alternatif (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The feminist strike of November 30 had a significant impact and impact 
in the four provinces of the southern Basque Country (1). The demands 
were essentially focused on care (2) in society, with a vision and 
demands concerning work in this very feminized, precarious and 
commercialized sector. ---- But this feminist dynamic that has been 
underway for at least two years (and which does not stop with the strike 
day of November 30) wants to go beyond the construction of a balance of 
power against employers and Basque government; it also seeks to outline 
anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal perspectives that consider care in 
a community, universal, free, collective and co-responsible way.

The decision to go on strike was not taken lightly, it is not the 
"late-night whim of a few feminists", as the Basque government liked to 
say. It is part of a process initiated in February 2022 by the platform 
"Denon Bizitzak Erdigunean" ("The centrality of life for all"). It was 
then that the impetus for mobilization in favor of a Basque 
public-community healthcare system came.
A long process then began, with the highlight of the project of a 
general strike announced on March 8, 2023. This is part of the lineage 
of the feminist strikes of 2018 and 2019, those of retirees of 2020, 
numerous strikes carried out in feminized sectors. Without forgetting 
the care initiatives provided in a community and autonomous manner 
during the Covid pandemic (care networks, neighborhood networks, 
neighborhood groups, resistance funds, etc.) wherever the public health 
system was failing and inefficient and which have demonstrated great 
capacities for self-organization, yet totally ignored by institutions.
Since then, the feminists and the platform organizations have carried 
out a lot of work: reports, conferences (3), meetings, proposals, 
creation of feminist assemblies in the villages and neighborhoods of the 
four provinces initiating mixed strike committees.
The platform activists were aware that the choice of strike was 
paradoxical, in the field of care. Indeed, many women could not do it: 
some require them to stay at home for children, the elderly; others 
because of contracts that are too precarious; other constraints by the 
obligatory minimum service; others without the right to strike, 
foreigners without papers... The strike precisely wanted to highlight 
these precariousness, these social injustices (Inset). But faced with 
these difficulties of going on strike, it now appears essential to 
invent new forms of struggle for the future.
Furthermore, the call was launched for the strike to be used both in the 
workplace, in the salary context, and for all unpaid care tasks made 
invisible, mainly carried out by women, a role to which they are 
assigned by the patriarchy. Especially since the public sphere of care 
and health is increasingly threatened, the response to the fundamental 
needs of life is increasingly left to the private sphere, which means, 
in a capitalist and patriarchal system, borne by women.
On November 30, actions took place in more than 100 municipalities and 
neighborhoods. More than twenty demonstrations took place that day, 
including four massive ones in the capitals of the four provinces (4).

To provide active visibility and create blockages, the strike began with 
pickets in front of industrial companies and symbolic healthcare sectors 
(retirement homes, home working companies, hospitals, etc.).
More than 1,500 committees came forward to set up these strike pickets. 
The repercussions have been significant, particularly in Gipuzkoa, where 
the production of various companies (electromechanical construction, 
Arcelor Mittal, automated equipment, agro-food, precision mechanics, 
electronic components, etc.) has been completely paralyzed, or whose he 
activity was seriously disrupted (automotive, logistics, private 
transport). There were also some tensions with the police, identity 
checks and two people detained, but released fairly quickly. The strike 
was very well attended in public education establishments (70 to 75% of 
strikers) leading to school closures as well as an almost total 
paralysis of university campuses. A large number of media outlets went 
on strike as well as public transport employees, interrupted in the 
morning or operating slowly, causing significant traffic jams.

However, the imposition of the minimum service had a clear negative 
effect on the possibilities of stopping work in the care sectors, even 
if they did not operate in a completely normal way that day. In the 
public health department of the Basque Autonomous Community, Osakidetza, 
once again the right to strike has been denied to thousands of workers.

The day of demands was supported by the majority Basque unions ELA and 
LAB, who organized and are still organizing work stoppages in feminized 
sectors such as commerce, home help, canteens, cleaning... In 2023, 2 /3 
of the strikes in the southern Basque Country had women as protagonists. 
The Steilas, ESK, CNT and CGT unions as well as associations of retirees 
and families of retirement home residents also called for a strike. Men 
were also called to participate in this general strike ("Care - it's 
your business too!")
The first issue of the strike was to demand rights for those employed in 
the highly feminized personal care sector, where working conditions are 
unacceptable. In addition to the demands relating to salaries and 
pensions (5), there are calls for a reduction in working hours, the 
creation of positions with redistribution so that men also take charge 
of them, an end to privatization and under-employment. contracting which 
causes and maintains precariousness.
Another challenge was to use this strike as a means of putting pressure 
on Basque institutions and leaders to reach an agreement for a public 
health system that meets needs. It made it possible to denounce the 
erosion of the right to care and its commercialization by capital, "by 
vulture funds and vampire companies, in the interest and for the profit 
of the bourgeoisie to the detriment of people's care". The 
responsibility of the parties in power, the Basque Nationalist Party 
(PNV) and the Socialist Party, is singled out. Especially since they 
recover the term "care" and the concept of "centrality of life" in their 
speeches and electoral programs while they make care a business by 
selling public services to private companies which thus carry out 
million in profits. The day after the strike of November 30, the "Denon 
Bizitzak Erdigunean" platform demanded that Basque government officials 
organize work and debate meetings on the theme of care in order to go 
further in the social agreement currently being developed for a public 
health system.
Finally, the strike was also considered as a means and a strong moment 
of politicization. The objective of the platform is to change the model, 
to attack the hierarchy and the sexual and racial division of labor 
linked to the capitalist system and patriarchy. Hence the need for care 
and health to be considered as socially necessary activities, which must 
be accessible to all, be better distributed between women and men and be 
thought of, decided and taken care of collectively.
The platform affirms that care is a collective right that concerns and 
involves everyone. She notes that today the model is individualistic and 
atomized and that the community relationships that should be found have 
largely been lost.
It is not a question of the community replacing what administrations are 
not doing. But certain tasks fall to everyone, and everyone is 
co-responsible for them. Certainly, the feminists of the platform are 
aware that the community is not exempt from risks: relations of power, 
domination, attacks on autonomy, situations of dependence... and also 
and above all, risk of strengthening a feminized community around of 
care and therefore the confinement of women in a role to which they have 
been assigned for centuries.

The public-community care that the platform advocates requires a major 
cultural change, a profound upheaval of social conditions that breaks 
with what exists. Delegate power over one's individual and collective 
life to others as little as possible, reclaim for oneself and others the 
ability to care, organize oneself for this by creating and strengthening 
networks of exchange, reciprocity, mutual aid, protection, where 
everyone is an actor and has the floor to decide. ... The culture of 
care can only be worked transversally and globally, by boosting 
awareness and politicization, because it touches all areas: the family; 
the relationships between young people and the elderly, children and 
adults; male and female social roles; social inequalities in terms of 
housing, education, etc.; work and the division of tasks; the production 
of quality food accessible to all; the end of useless, dangerous and 
socially useless production; attention paid to the environment, etc... 
In short, the total questioning of patriarchy and capitalism.

Women play a vital role in the healthcare sector. Devalued role, and 
carried out in often precarious and poorly paid situations
61% of hours worked in the southern Basque Country are intended for care 
tasks, whether or not they are paid. Although it is essential work, its 
distribution is not equitable; it is carried out almost entirely (more 
than 80%) by women. Many foreign women (98%) work in services such as 
home help, carers, domestic workers, etc.; many are in an irregular 
situation, threatened with expulsion from the country, and precisely for 
this reason, suffer even more than other precarious contracts, excessive 
hours, lack of vacations and rest, poverty wages.

Kris, December 3

Notes
1- No strike in the northern Basque Country, where feminist movements 
remain weak, but buses left Bayonne to join the strikers in San Sebastian
2- The care system in the broad sense (cuidados, which could be 
translated as care or "care and connection"
3- The fifth feminist conference of 2019 brought together more than 
3,000 women near Bilbao
4- Bilbao, San Sebastián, Pamplona and Vitoria.
5- It is also about denouncing the difference in salary and pension 
between women and men. 47% of retired women receive a pension of less 
than 1000 euros, and 66.7% of retirees who receive less than the minimum 
wage are women.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4051
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