This Thursday, the Ministry of Civil Service increased the salary increase offer for the 3.5 million public employees by one point, for a total of 11% distributed between 2025 and 2028, both years inclusive, as reported by union negotiators. However, and despite this improvement – which increases the first proposal presented on Wednesday by 2,000 million euros – the government insisted that the increase could not exceed the 4% accumulated in the first two years, which led the unions CC OO, UGT and CSIF to reject the initial proposal yesterday. This, in principle, generated various union reactions which, for the moment, prevented the agreement.
On the other hand, the new Secretary of State for the Public Service, Consuelo Sánchez, has communicated to the union negotiators “that there is no plan B” and this is the latest proposal from the Executive, which is why she invited the union negotiators to speak with their organizations so that they can decide whether to give a yes or no to the Government’s offer. The ministry has called the unions again next Monday to give the final answer.
According to the statements of the union leaders, the greatest rejection of this new proposal comes from the CSIF. At the headquarters of public employees they ensure that they evaluate the additional point of the increase but continue to consider the offer “insufficient” because they assure that “it condemns public employees to continue to lose purchasing power which accumulates to that lost after the 2010 cuts”, a loss that this central figure estimates at around 20% from that date. Furthermore, although they state that “there is still flexibility to negotiate” and that they will do so “until the last minute”, they also warn that if, as everything indicates, the offer maintains the increase limit at 4% for 2025 and 2026, this union “will have to return to the streets” to continue with the mobilizations.
However, from the UGT, the general secretary of Public Services, Isabel Araque, was more conciliatory and specified that if the limit of 4% accumulated in the first two years (2025 and 2026) was maintained but a fixed 5% was applied (without being subject to any variable) in January 2027, “for us the offer would be worth it, because it would mean that in just 13 months public employees would have a salary increase of 9%. The body direction of this The federation will meet this Thursday to “do the math” and make a decision.
For his part, the coordinator of the Public Area of the CCOO, Lucho Palazzo, also left the door open to an agreement, understanding that the initial offer had been improved by 2,000 million euros and, above all, that the final agreement does not only include the salary increase, but a series of improvements in terms of employment and rights of public employees. However, in the negative part of this Thursday’s meeting, Palazzo stressed that the government had no room to increase salaries by more than 4% accumulated in 2025 and 2026. And he announced that with all these conditions the federal council of public space will meet on Saturday and the health and education federations will also make an offer to decide whether or not to support this agreement.
From CC OO, they further stated in a statement that “to reach an agreement, it is also essential that the government commits to the chapters pending the execution of the Framework Agreement for a 21st Century Administration (2022-2024)”. And, specifically, they referred, among other things, to the unblocking and recovery of partial retirements, the full implementation of the 35-hour working day and the professional classification of high and medium level technicians.
Negotiations to try to reach a multi-year and employment agreement began at the beginning of this November, after senior public service officials from CC OO and UGT and the public employees trade union center CSIF threatened the sector minister, Oscar López, with mobilizations and a strike in the sector in December if he did not sit down to immediately negotiate the salary increase of public employees.
After having set the general and calendar objectives in a first meeting, issues related to public employment were addressed in the second meeting. Specifically, the Government has proposed, as the union leaders recalled today, the progressive disappearance of the so-called replacement rate, which limits job offers to the vacancies left by retirements.
