They have started the year with their salary frozen and with uncertainty about their health care due to doubts about the Muface concert. The discrepancies between the insurers that provide the services, Adeslas, Asisa and DKV, and the Government are putting at risk the future of the mutual insurance company that manages the healthcare of nearly two million civil servants and their families.
The difficulties of Pedro Sánchez’s Executive in agreeing on the General State Budgets for 2025, a project that should have come into force with the new year, have delayed the salary revaluation of civil servants this year. In this way, public employees start 2025 with frozen salaries, just as happened last year. Then, in the middle of the year, the Executive approved the agreed increase so that the group did not lose purchasing power. Last year, the Government approved public contracts when one of the requirements of the salary revaluation agreement was met, that the GDP grew more than 2.5%. After confirmation by the National Statistics Institute, the Council of Ministers uploaded the supplement. In June, when the Executive made the decision to renounce the 2024 Budgets, . Although the increase was made at the beginning of summer, the salary improvement was approved retroactively from January of that year. The Ministry of Finance has already promised that it will also raise it later this year when it manages to clear the budget horizon.
This year, in addition, the public service table, which includes representatives of public workers and the Ministry of Public Service, should negotiate a new path of revaluation for the coming years. In the previous three-year period, between 2022 and 2024, the central banks agreed to cumulative increases of almost 10% to avoid losing purchasing power in the midst of the inflationary crisis. However, the majority union in the General State Administration, CSIF, estimates that in that period public Administration workers have lost 6% of purchasing power. For this reason, the organization chaired by Miguel Borra has demanded that the minister of the sector, Óscar López, negotiate as soon as possible the salary increase, the elimination of the replacement rate and a new offer of public employment for 2025, among other demands. The organization has already initiated contacts with parliamentary groups to pressure Congress. The most important union organizations in the country, CC OO and UGT, have recently closed an agreement with the Government to recover the right to partial retirement of public employees. And they have also called on the Public Service to negotiate during this month of January the salary increase for the coming years.
In addition, officials are awaiting what happens with the Muface health agreement, which has launched the second tender after the three insurers that have provided the services – Adeslas, Asisa and DKV – did not present themselves to the first due to losses. economics that it entails. The concern of the group of Muface mutualists is growing after Adeslas, one of the three insurers of the current agreement in force, despite having increased premiums by 33.5%. The other two insurers, Asisa and DKV, have indicated to this newspaper that they continue studying the specifications to make a decision in this regard, something for which they have time until January 15. In fact, Asisa has admitted that she is analyzing the possibility of attending even alone.
Muface has informed mutual members through an email that between January 1 and 31 of this month they will be able to request the change to public health services of autonomous communities.
From the moment the new agreement is in force and until the date available, a second period will be opened to make the change from the regional health service to a concerted entity or between concerted entities that are awarded the service. As there is no new agreement, the deadline for choosing an insurer thus has to be postponed to a second moment.
The CSIF union has decided to appeal directly to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to solve the Muface crisis, given the fear that the tender to cover the healthcare of 1.5 million civil servants and their families will be compromised. The organization sent a letter last Monday to the leader of the Executive in which it requests his mediation to guarantee the continuity of the health care model for public employees.
Muface clarified in that email that “the continuity of benefits is fully guaranteed until the entry into force of the new agreement.” Interested insurers have until January 15 to submit their offers to the second tender for the new agreement that will cover the years 2025-2027.
