Traditionally, the signing of a sectoral agreement is synonymous with social peace, and often involves a period of reflection and appreciation of the agreements reached. Following the signing of the collective agreement in July, a new cycle has been launched for the social intervention sector in Bizkaia. From then on, a window of opportunity will be opened to reformulate the sectoral model and to avoid future access to the dead end.

ESK highly appreciates the agreement within the limits of the current system, materializing milestones that seemed not to have been achieved before, and we do so to the same extent in relation to the debates and reflections that emerged throughout the process.

After two and a half years of labor conflict, the weakness of the seams shown by a global model of subcontracting public responsibilities has allowed for a deep reflection of the social intervention staff.

This analysis comes from a qualitative leap in key issues, and although it is a subjective assessment, we consider them key to the evolution of the sector. On the one hand, to make visible, mobilize and achieve the sense of identity of the workers, which strengthens us in the struggles of the future. On the other hand, as a fundamental element to highlight, the fundamental debate that has been generated in the organized assemblies on the end of the current model, and the need for a change of vision in the sector, clearly underlining the publicity of the sector.

ESK began this negotiation with the conviction that it was necessary to make the sector public, and after the negotiating process and the signing of the agreement, we ratified, not only from a political point of view, but from the conviction that publication is the only way to give the sector technical viability if we want to offer working conditions comparable to the public sphere.

The current model is based on transferring this public responsibility to private entities, without sufficient public funding, with an employer who works with the administration and is not demanding. Consequently, the lack of responsibility for the services entails unacceptable limitations for professionals in the sector, mostly women, and for users of the services.

As we have said, we are faced with a general outsourcing of public responsibilities. This subcontracting has been carried out by several organizations and, in most cases, has been created to implement, through volunteering, the necessary services for the community that the administration did not comply with. Decades later, they have become institutions used by the administration itself to avoid responsibilities in the quality of the service, reduce costs and look away at the permanent needs to be met.

The needs and rights of the countless elderly, young people, indigenous and migrant people, people in situations of extreme vulnerability, people in situations of dependency, women victims of gender violence and people who have survived, among many other groups who at different times in their lives need help and protection in order to live in a dignified way.

We reiterate that the tasks carried out within the social intervention sector are public, financed by the administration, but more and more private entities manage them. This is not an opinion, but a reality that provides worrying data, since 90% of the services are public, although the majority are privately owned, since of the 600 existing public companies, only 10 are private.

The ultimate objective of this model seems to be the realization of a care business, which entails a worsening of the working conditions, a disregard of professional work, and makes even more evident the scarce relevance that the rights of many groups we serve for the administration itself have.

As a real alternative to the transition to a public model, it is essential to change the role played by the entities, fighting for the scarce funds that the institutions put in "competition", towards a demanding role that is fundamental in the face of the lack of commitment of the administration. Where did the pretensions of many organizations that emerged in order to disappear once the administration managed to assume its responsibility?

Since the experience of ESK in the Social Intervention sector, a bet has begun that unites us and unites us more in the future: the commitment to the provision of quality services with public personnel. As workers, we feel that this process has strengthened us and we have made alliances that bring value and make us more visible to our care work. From the feminist world they have supported and supported us at all times, because among many other demands we share a fundamental, a public care system that guarantees the rights of our people and the people we serve.

This is an open road in this conciliation process that we are going to develop in the coming years, it is our sectoral proposal, and as workers in the sector and ESK militants we will continue to involve ourselves to the fullest to achieve it.

Silvia Urquijo Ortega and Ederra Zabala Urrutia, social intervention workers and ESK union delegates