The UGT unions and Workers’ Commissions have announced this Monday that they will demand that the General State Administration equalize the salaries of labor personnel with civil servants. “They cannot continue to maintain pay inequality, nor the grievances that occur with respect to other public administrations,” claimed the federal secretary of the branch at UGT, Carlos Álvarez, in a joint press conference.
The procedures for the negotiation of the new agreement, the fifth, will begin on November 4 with the denunciation of the previous agreement, with which the unions consider having achieved “the fundamental basic objective, which was a new modern professional classification, which fits both in the current educational system and with the status of public employees.”
“Homologating the professional classification in the previous agreement, now we have to take this second step, which is the equalization of remuneration,” insisted the spokesperson for the UGT-Public Services sector in the IV Single Agreement, Elena Tarjuelo, who pointed out that this Equation is a question of “justice.” “There is the same qualification requirement, the same base salary,” he claimed before pointing out that, in some cases, as in the case of forestry agents or aircraft mechanics of the Air Force — the Ministry of Defense is one of the departments which has a larger number of employees—this difference exceeds 3,000 euros annually.
The salary difference that the unions want to remedy is not only between officials and labor personnel. “We have been accumulated years behind in relation to other public administrations. The data are stubborn and, in comparison with other autonomous communities, such as Madrid, the salary differences are estimated at around an average of between 8 and 11%,” indicated the CCOO spokesperson in the previous agreement, Vidal Cruzado. , which has denounced that “the workforce is economically inferior and mistreated in relation to all other administrations.” Furthermore, he has indicated that these differences are not only about the base salary. “Even in a mathematically objective concept like antiquity, we see a very notable difference in the value of the triennium.”
In the new negotiation, UGT and CCOO hope to improve the salary conditions, but also promotion, of the nearly 40,000 public workers. In this sense, the organizations have regretted that the horizontal career, which allows a progression of workers in their jobs, “in force in many autonomous communities”, has not yet been implemented in the General Administration of the State, nor for officials.
The general secretary of the sector at CCOO, Esther Abajo, has demanded from the Ministry of Public Service that the negotiation be “dynamic” and take place “within a reasonable period of time” so that “it allows the conditions of the personnel who serve in the Administration to be improved.” General of the State and that also make free shift positions attractive and not ensure that they do not remain vacant, which will result in a better quality of public services.”
Specifically, the unions estimate the number of job vacancies in the sector at around 10,000, which derive from the retrenchment policies produced “as a result of the financial crisis” and the reduction in public employment offers and the “outsourcing of the service.” explained Álvarez, who has pointed out that the majority of these positions have already been announced in 2021 and 2022 and in the next job offer in 2023 and 2024. “We understand that employment is going to be recovered, but that means that they can cover the positions, so we have to make the offer attractive,” he pointed out, to remember that, in this case, the administration competes to attract talent both with other administrations and with the private sector.
#unions #demand #equalization #salaries #labor #personnel #officials #negotiation #agreement
