This Monday, the Ministries of Civil Service and Finance failed to convince the three most representative unions of the public sector (CC OO, UGT and CSIF) to support as a whole their proposal to increase the salary of 3.5 million public employees by 11% between 2025 and 2028 (both years inclusive), so they decided to continue negotiations on Wednesday. The main obstacle, according to several sources familiar with the conversations, is that the Government remains firm on one condition: public salaries will only be able to increase by a maximum of 4% accumulated in 2025 and 2026, as reported by the general secretary of the Public Area of the CC OO, Lucho Palazzo.
Thus, to ensure purchasing power in the current year, the wages of these workers would have to increase by 2.5% (about the average increase in inflation for the year), which would limit the increase for 2026 to just 1.5%. This would almost certainly result in a loss of purchasing power next year, which prevented unions from supporting the multi-year agreement. According to the UGT Public Services secretary, Isabel Araque, the unions proposed moving half a point of the 7% increase to 2026 which would correspond to 2027 and 2028, but the Executive underlined this. Although, on the bright side, Araque stressed that the Public Service has accepted that no part of the pay increase is tied to meeting variable conditions such as CPI or GDP, so the 11% increase after four years would be fully guaranteed.
For its part, the CSIF public employees union insisted on the need to extend the negotiations beyond this Monday and believes that “there is room for improvement” so they “aspire to the best possible agreement”. This center ensures that improvements have been achieved in the text regarding permits, internal promotions, improvement of Muface assistance, occupational or professional classification, as well as the commitment to the total elimination of the replacement tariff. The CSIF will consult its management bodies regarding its position regarding this agreement.
Negotiating sources indicated that the government’s intention was to obtain the centers’ approval for this salary offer to approve it this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers and be able to pay the 2025 increase retroactively with effect from January 1 in the December payslips. However, the unions categorically reject the 4% limitation to 2025 and 2026 and believe that there is room to continue negotiations and reach an agreement that will be approved in a subsequent Council of Ministers. But for now, Treasury officials have called on union representatives, if necessary, to consult their senior bodies overnight to provide a response before Tuesday’s cabinet meeting.
The Executive’s alternative to his offer, as discussed at this Monday’s meeting, was to not increase public salaries at all (not even in 2025 with retroactive effect) and to rely on future salary increases in the General State Budgets, the chances of which of being approved are very slim. If so, unions have already warned that, in the absence of wage improvements, they will call a general strike across the public sector in December.
Late last Friday afternoon, optimism reigned among some government and trade union negotiators that a new wage and employment agreement would be reached. However, this optimism was not easily crystallized into an agreement. The Ministry of Civil Service had already given an ultimatum to CC OO, UGT and CSIF on Thursday last week: the salary increase between 2025 and 2028 would be cumulatively 11% and had invited the centers to take a position this Monday. The response from the union majority was negative regarding the distribution of raises over the four years of the agreement and they hope to continue negotiations to change this issue.
