The European Commission resumes the sanctioning file opened in 2015 against the Kingdom of Spain for not transposing Directive 1999/70/EC on the Framework Agreement of the ETUC, UNICE and CEEP on fixed-term work into domestic law after more than 25 years. Through a letter of summons, it urges you to present allegations and correct the deficiencies raised within a period of two months, considering that Law 20/2021 does not contain effective measures to sanction and compensate for abuse of temporary employment in public administrations. This compromises European funds Next Generation and its possible return, and opens the way to the imposition of important coercive sanctions. Let us remember that the agreement reached was to reach a figure of no more than 8% temporality and the most optimistic estimates indicate that in any case it will exceed 25%.
But let’s go to the origins of the problem to understand its causes and the magnitude it has acquired, unprecedented since the unfortunate “industrial reconversion”. For three decades, governments and administrations have made their employees precarious, enjoying cheap workers, until recently our seniority was not even recognized, always submissive under the threat of dismissal and occupying very unattractive and unstable positions. The perfect combination for those to continue committing their outrages. For this reason, the calls for competitions were increasingly scarce and with an absolutely ridiculous number of places offered. Until reaching the year 2008 when they were practically eliminated until 2015 with the famous “agreement” of the then Minister of Finance and Public Service, Christopher Montorowith the large union centers, and after which enormous selective processes classified, without being so, “stabilization” were announced and which, at the end of 2024, continue to be developed.
All of this has meant that a pool of temporary employees has been generated that exceeds 1,100,000 and of which more than 800,000 are in abuse of long-term temporary employment. Of the latter, more than 70% are women over 50 years old who, for obvious reasons, such as the inability to reconcile study with work and family, are not going to pass purely rote exams that have nothing to do with applications and day-to-day regulations in their respective administrations. These women have complied, throughout their working lives, with the parameters that society and administrations have demanded of them and now, forgetting the applause at eight in the afternoon during the pandemic, they turn their backs on them and are integrated, thereby , in a group classified by the SEPE as difficult to reintegrate into the workforce. Impossible, I would say, if the businessman observes that they have been civil servants for five years or decades. It should be noted that the sentence to social exclusion would be for life because of how it would affect her retirement, another portrait of this government’s postcard feminism.
With the modification of article 10 and the new provisions of the EBEP, the “most progressive government in history” Not only did it leave it to the limited will of the non-compliant administrations to provide stability to its workers in fraud of law, it also spread a red carpet for the hidden massive amortization of positions as a preliminary step to the privatization of public services, for which only will need a new economic crisis as an excuse. Limiting the duration of the temporary employment to three years means the end of the figure of abuse of temporary employment, but it does not guarantee the occupation of the position by a permanent or a new temporary one, which translates, in any case, into a loss of specific experience and training. This situation could get even worse, since it would not even be necessary to reach three years. The change in the administrative situation of the occupied position also entails termination.
However, the icing on the cake is in the second paragraph of section 4 of said article where it is stated that “the vacancy may only be filled by career civil servants unless the corresponding selective process is void, in which case another appointment of personnel may be made”… or not. In a clearly degenerative economic situation with enormous economic crises, which we have suffered not so long ago, since we pay the usual price, and we will suffer again since they are inherent to the cyclical condition of capitalism, and under a neoliberal government, any of those who We have already suffered… Who assures us that these processes will be called? Its logic is to leave as many vacant places as necessary as a preliminary step to the privatization of public services, undertaking a brutal amortization of jobs with the purpose of further deteriorating public services if possible. Perhaps hence the commitment of the obscure former minister Escrivá in the implementation of Artificial Intelligence in public administrations, replacing people with machines, copying the system of the teleoperation companies that they themselves are correcting since it has turned out to be a failure in moderately complex procedures.
Meanwhile, administrations suffer the ravages of perverse legislation that strains already depleted workforces to unbearable levels. Its members have had to assume the role of continuous trainers of new colleagues, in addition to suffering the absence of the old, more experienced ones, and their non-coverage or replacement with the consequent increase in the workload. All of this has led to situations of collapse and inactivity in many administrations, very easily identifiable as we move away from large cities, where lower or no profitability does not call for the private sector. This forces empty Spain to become even more empty, in the absence of basic public services that in theory are guaranteed by our Constitution. A reality that will only get worse, because by failing to comply with its own regulations, European regulations, its jurisprudence and the agreements reached, the “solution” What they have found to disguise the figures is to cover absolutely nothing, no matter how much it is necessary, at least until the end of the year. Temporary not hired, temporary that does not count, but the damage to citizens increases.
With two reasons, the collapse will reach the already saturated sector of a justice system to which those affected will turn in tens of thousands in the coming months, who will find nothing but brutal legal insecurity, inappropriate for a rule of law, with a amalgamation of sentences that range from absolute denial to recognition of the abuse (even with sentences to costs, as the 3rd chamber of the Supreme Court had been doing, until recently, to the workers for defending their rights), to the recognition of fixity following the jurisprudence of the CJEU (Court of Justice of the European Union). This, in the rulings of February 22 and June 13 of this same year, even calls for ignoring a body with the capacity to create jurisprudence, such as the Supreme Court (whose members, after all, are appointed by the two large political parties in this country), for ignoring effective judicial protection and European, supranational and mandatory law. Well, it has ignored sentences, orders, opinions, infringement procedures and letters of formal notice from the European Union, unlike what, in identical situations, the analogous bodies of our neighbors in Portugal, Greece and Italy have done.
The fight against precariousness in public employment has put a stop to the neoliberal economic policies that both PP and PSOE share (more than 80% of their votes in Europe for this purpose coincide), by placing the focus, along with the pandemic of COVID, on the public, on everyone, thus preventing them from implementing the Anglo-Saxon model of the free market that attacks a collective and solidarity model that has been the object of praise. A model that the economic elites that hide behind the acronyms of these parties intend to demolish and commercialize.
It is for all the above reasons that the call for the mobilization of October 19 at 12 noon in Plaza Neptuno in Madrid goes far beyond the defense of labor rights that the administrations, far from setting an example with their observance, lead decades undermining. Our educational, health and social systems are at serious risk of dismantling. Consequently, I strongly encourage any citizen with a minimum of conscience to attend the appointment, since they are also seriously attacking him, his family and friends.
By the way, if you go to the demonstration, do not look for the blocks of the unions that signed the “agreement” de Montoro, organizations that continue to be represented in the general tables and maintain their financing channels through substantial public subsidies. Perks granted to them by governments and administrations that they will never oppose, such as the dark business of training, an important part of which is linked to access to public service. It ties their hands and feet, preventing them from exercising what should be their essential function as defenders of workers’ rights, which they do do, with better or worse results, in the private sector. So much so, that it is the only explanation why civil servants have lost, in just over a decade, more than 20% of purchasing power without a single protest.
#defense #public
