Lack of means to perform rapid and massive tests, masks and gloves necessary to prevent or not spread contamination, lack of personnel in the health and care field, lack of equipment for special care, need to put and not decide who… This is not the situation created by the coronavirus, but the nudity that has generated decades of cuts and neoliberal policies. They have left us naked, especially those who have fewer resources and more need for public services to adapt to our daily lives, even to survive in some cases, especially when we are hit by this type of crisis.

Public services are the achievement of a struggle developed for many years by the working class to somehow resolve and balance the inequalities and injustices generated by the capitalist system.

On the road to social justice and to ensure the basic well-being and development of all people, education, health, care, social protection, justice, the defence of rights and security, which are fundamental to society as a whole, must be protected from capitalist and political interests.

However, the various governments of the Basque Country, following other economic, ideological or partisan interests, have developed almost many of these public services or made them available to private companies. In fact, they have privatized, outsourced or outsourced services that the public in every way should be the first in private hands, or that have been under the administration.

Basic legislation, deficit limits and spending rules have served to decapitalize public services of citizenship, to allocate public funds to the hands of capital and to turn the public sector into a business space.

For example, the 2020 budget of the Vitoria-Gasteiz Government allocates 13% of the wealth we generate to public services, 2.6 points less than in 2009, which is 2.135 million less. And in the case of the Government of Pamplona, 3 points lower than in 2008, 675 million less. Can you imagine what we could do in our public services every year with an additional 2.810 million?

These policies place us at the last end of Europe in the public investment we allocate to education, health or basic social services within our wealth.

To this we must add that our tax system is also one of the most unfair in Europe and that each year we give EUR 8 billion to the European Union average to the richest in Euskal Herria. 8 billion a year! How many health professionals, caregivers, cleaners, teachers, educators, social workers, hospital beds, special care units, respirators, brands, tests... if we had invested all that money?

The consequence of all these cuts is that in health, education, care and social works we are working with thousands of less hard-working people, with privatised services and staff that depend on the profits of the companies they manage, with huge workloads to tackle regular work and with absolutely insufficient resources. Nothing to say in exceptional situations. The cuts we are trying to compensate for with enormous involvement and personal effort, but which in no case can be taken over by a fair and balanced society.

Furthermore, behind these general data are the temporary contracts, the part-sessions and the faces of tens of thousands of people who do not reach EUR 1,200. In most cases, women and outsourced companies. Within the union’s calculations, in our country there are more than 120,000 employees in privatized and subcontracted companies in public services essential to society as a whole. In total, thousands of workers work in precarious conditions in the fields of education, health, care, social protection, justice, defence of rights and security.

We are hearing from many points of view that this crisis has highlighted the importance and necessity of public services and of those who have developed policies to reduce them continuously. And that is, of course. But don't be fooled. This crisis has not changed the interests and ideologies of the owners of capital, of the entrepreneurs and of the politicians at their service. After a few months, taking as an excuse the public debt generated by the crisis, they will again try to develop policies to cut and dismantle public services.

We have to prepare ourselves to deal with it. But we must take advantage of what this crisis has put in place in order to take further steps. If we want to put life at the centre, we have to get out of the private sphere, out of the bondage of women, out of precariousness, out of precariousness, out of the hidden and privatized jobs and services, out of making public many of them, out of significantly increasing investment in public services, more personnel, in good condition and with more resources. We will leave the king naked and clothe the people.

Igor Eizagirre

Head of GIZALAN of ELA