Humberto Muñoz, general secretary of the Federation of Health and Health Sectors of CCOO
The economic crisis caused by the ukrainian war it has delayed the possibilities of officials to reopen the negotiation to update their salaries according to inflation. unions like Workers Commissions (CCOO) are not willing to give up this rise to offset the rise in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), although they have stretched out their hand to stretch it in time with the aim of avoiding a sudden impact on the economy in 2021.
The general secretary of the Federation of Health and Health Sectors of the CCOO, Humberto Muñoz, explained that his team’s approach is to claim the Government a 6.5 percent rise in the salary of the toilets that is carried out gradually during the next three years, but that it incorporates review clauses in the event of a new rise in inflation.
“We are not willing for public employees to be, in the end, those who pay these sacrifices”, affirmed the union representative to Medical Writing.
This is a similar approach to the one that the unions have already brought to the negotiating table with the employers and the Government within the framework of the Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) that has been activated to decide the updates of salaries in the private sector, although with salary ranges higher.
In order to make this new formula official for updating civil servants’ salaries, the Workers’ Commissions have already urged the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration to convene the General Board in which it will decide on the change in salaries. “We can address a multi-year agreement that is not for a single year, in which we can see how to fit those salary increasesMunoz pointed out.
The spokesman for the CCOO health area has insisted that the rise is necessary after public workers have staged a loss of purchasing power of between 10 and 15 percent since the beginning of the international financial crisis. A phenomenon that amounts to an impact of up to 25 percent for some health groups. “This salary loss has not been fully recovered with the agreements that have been previously signed and that is why we wanted to undertake the negotiation of improving the civil service in a third agreement”, he explained.
CCOO refuses to link civil servant increases to the private sector
What the Workers’ Commissions are not willing to admit is that the salaries of civil servants are decided outside the General Board of Civil Service after the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchezdropped that the salary update would be linked to the result of the rent agreement that is being debated with employers in the private sector. “Transmitting that to public employees is complicated because the company is the State,” she stressed.
Muñoz has branded Sánchez’s proposal as a “fickleness” of the president and has opted to separate the two negotiations. In his opinion, public employees will also have to make their contribution to alleviate the impact of the war and energy prices, but bearing in mind that they have already suffered two strong salary cuts in 2008 and 2012. “I do not deny that we are in a major crisis, but maintaining essential public services must be a inalienable objective for a progressive government”, has pointed out.
“In the case of health, we are talking about a sector that has been severely punished in recent years. It has been quite undercapitalized from the point of view of templates. We wait significant retirement rates in the coming years and we still have the slab of the restocking fee”recalled the CCOO health spokesman.
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