Overview

• Confebask has refused to engage in separate talks and insists any Basque minimum wage must be negotiated within the Mesa de Diálogo Social and tied to competitiveness and absenteeism metrics.
• The Basque Government report proposes setting the sectoral minimum wage between €1,268 and €1,385 per month.
• ELA and LAB argue the draft would exclude workers under state agreements or outside collective bargaining and deem the proposed rate too low to lift low-income employees above poverty thresholds.
• The unions criticized the external study’s technical analysis and launched a popular legislative initiative to secure broader regional authority over wage-setting.
• Negotiations remain deadlocked, exposing fresh strains in the Basque consensus-driven social dialogue as partners clash over the negotiation forum and substantive conditions.