The Ministry of Public Function and the CCOO and UGT unions have closed an agreement this Wednesday so that public employees, both civil servants and statutory personnel, can benefit from partial retirement. “We recover a right suppressed with the adjustment and austerity measures adopted by the previous Government in 2012, while we eliminate an unjustified asymmetry with private sector workers,” said Minister Óscar López during the signing of the agreement.
Partial retirement will allow public employees who wish to make part-time work compatible with collecting part of their pension, before the legal retirement age. Specifically, the agreement foresees that this will take place under the same conditions that the Government negotiated with the social agents in the summer for employed workers in the private sector: they will be able to benefit three years before the retirement age, with a reduction in working hours of between 20 and 33% the first year and between 25 and 75% the other two.
The agreement, which will be transferred “immediately” to the General Negotiation Table of Public Administrations for ratification this Thursday and represents a “historic” demand of the signatory unions, will entail the modification of the Basic Statute of Public Employees, the Law General of Social Security and Passive Classes. “The commitment to the Government is that these reforms are processed “as soon as possible”,” the unions point out.
The agreement reached now, however, “does not generate additional budgetary costs”, because the figure of the reliever will be, in this case, career civil servants. Thus, the corresponding places must therefore be “provided for in public employment offers or equivalent planning instruments for the year in which retirement is going to occur.”
“It is about promoting the transfer of knowledge in the public sector between the most veteran workers and the new generations,” López defended about a measure committed to in the Framework Agreement for a 21st Century Administration. For the unions, the agreement is “key to rejuvenate the workforce, reduce precariousness and restore the rights of the workers of the Administrations.”
“Until now, civil servants and statutory staff were the only group of workers in Spain who could not access partial retirement, despite contributing the same as the rest. This agreement corrects a historical injustice, derived from the cuts approved in 2012 by the Popular Party Government, and expands the retirement options of these workers, who will now be able to decide how to separate themselves from the Public Administration based on their age and their personal circumstances,” CCOO and UGT said in a joint statement.
The then President of the Government, Mariano Rajoy, suppressed this possibility for public employees as part “of the adjustment and austerity measures,” Public Function says in a statement.
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