Why civil servant salary bargaining might affect increases in the private sector

Employers expect restraint from the Executive to avoid a troubling precedent in the face of thousands of collective agreements pending renewal. And plants are hard balance Among public workers is a figure that has not caused a profound loss in purchasing power, but is aware that the more resources the State dedicates to this increase, the less likely it will be to other types of policies for the most vulnerable.

repeated as separated understated lease agreement He begins his first attack this Wednesday. While employers and unions disagree on how to distribute the costs of inflation in the private sector, both social actors criticize – for their part – that the Government has not done enough for itself to facilitate the compromise. Now, at the gates of the draft General Government Budgets, the Executive will have to show one of its letters in the face of this revenue deal and decide how much (and how much) it thinks it owes at a double-digit CPI. willing ) to raise salaries in the civil service.

This year, salaries for civil servants rose 2% after the Treasury failed to reach an agreement with any of the three centers (CCOO, UGT and Csif) it needed to negotiate. The trio refused to accept a figure below the average CPI for 2021, which closed at 3.2%. they did not want to confirm the loss of purchasing power dand officials. Although the inflationary escalation was perceived by the majority as a temporary thing at the time, it is currently indefinite and the idea that the Government will not negotiate the figures at the current inflation level is accepted by all parties.

In order to reduce the default loss of purchasing power this year, factories, multi-year agreement this will make it possible to compensate for part of this year’s deficit in the coming years. Sources familiar with the preliminary talks between the treasury and the centers indicate that the increase Montero can bring to the table will be around 10% in three years. It’s a negative figure for this year, but this will provide higher-than-usual increases for the next two years.

Waiting for “References”

“This will be a reference,” was CEOE chairman Antonio Garamendi’s response this summer, regarding officials’ salaries and tenancy compliance. In fact, the 10% that Montero could change for public servants is not far from the figures that were mixed in the negotiations of some of the collective agreements currently in progress. yes ok collective bargaining is strictly prohibited.

The last major announcement, which has been shut down in recent weeks, relates to the hotel industry in Catalonia, which covers around 300,000 workers and is being renewed with a 9% increase (4% + 3% + 2%) by 2024. There was no union unity here and the UGT was signed, the CCOO distanced itself. The first laid out the purchasing power lost in recent years and the premise that “this is better than continuing the blocked deal”. specifically penalized by the industry joyful and stop the pandemic. Second, it was assessed as insufficient progress in the context of trade union competition.

absence of a salary review articleCompensating for the difference between the increase agreed for this year and the final figure of the CPI was a ‘frog’ that the factories had to deal with according to the criteria they received from their top governing bodies. And this is the main obstacle in the private sector. The CCOO and UGT request that they not sign any contracts without a salary review clause, regardless of the increases suggested by the employer. And they refuse to accept these clauses, from the CEOE, for the sake of companies that have to reopen accounts at the end of the year in order to significantly increase salaries.

The absence of such an clause, for example, agreement negotiations of offices and offices. Another that affects more workers, around 120,000 people, in Catalonia. There the employer offers a three-year increase of 8.75% (3.75% + 2.5% + 2.5%) and the unions demand 11.5% (5.5% + 3% + 3%), but the latter It contains a salary clause. “The deal is not even close,” said union sources consulted. The red line on this and many other deals hinders negotiations. For example, there was a clause of the metal industry in Barcelona, ​​which covered 170,000 people and is a reference for almost all of Spain, and now employers do not want to renew it if it is sustained. These features, renewed with this concept, are a few exceptions, as in the case of Seat, which the factories managed to renew for another three years.