Empty MERGE_LABELS not working

[laurajsdias]

Hi,

I have my job setup like this:

auto-merge:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: [ notify-tools-success ]
    permissions: 'write-all'
    steps:
      - id: automerge
        name: automerge
        uses: "pascalgn/automerge-action@v0.16.2"
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"
          MERGE_METHOD: "squash"
          MERGE_COMMIT_MESSAGE: "pull-request-title"
          MERGE_RETRIES: "3"
          MERGE_RETRY_SLEEP: "10000"
          MERGE_LABELS: ""
          MERGE_REQUIRED_APPROVALS: "0"

But it's not auto-merging, giving this error:

2025-07-29T15:29:46.329Z INFO  Event name: pull_request
2025-07-29T15:29:46.891Z INFO  Skipping PR update, required label missing: automerge
2025-07-29T15:29:46.894Z INFO  Merging PR #437 CF production: Add company
2025-07-29T15:29:46.894Z INFO  Current PR status: mergeable_state: blocked
2025-07-29T15:29:46.894Z INFO  Retrying after 10000 ms ... (1/3)
2025-07-29T15:29:57.316Z INFO  Current PR status: mergeable_state: blocked
2025-07-29T15:29:57.317Z INFO  Retrying after 10000 ms ... (2/3)
2025-07-29T15:30:07.821Z INFO  Current PR status: mergeable_state: blocked
2025-07-29T15:30:07.821Z INFO  Retrying after 10000 ms ... (3/3)
2025-07-29T15:30:18.306Z INFO  Current PR status: mergeable_state: blocked
2025-07-29T15:30:18.306Z INFO  PR not ready to be merged after 3 tries
2025-07-29T15:30:18.307Z INFO  Action result: { mergeResult: 'not_ready', pullRequestNumber: 437 }

Can someone help, please? The automerge label is actually missing, but the documentation says When an empty string ("") is given, all pull requests will be merged. and this was working fine before.