On July 21, the Ministry of State for Public Function, under the Ministry for the Digital Transformation directed by Oscar López, presented U. Since then, this announcement, materialized in a 177 -page document entitled Consensus for open administrationhas raised blisters between different unions representing officials and other state public employees. Complaints are varied and affect issues ranging from the proposal to change the current selection processes (oppositions); to the lack of references to salary improvements or the absence of greater negotiation with workers’ representatives, among other things.
The most combative are the members of the Spanish Federation of Associations of the upper bodies of the State Civil Administration (FEDECA), which brings together a quarantine of associations of officials of the upper bodies (A1 and A2) among which are the inspectors of the Treasury, Labor, the lawyers of the State; actuaries and social security economists; and diplomats; engineers of all kinds; statistical; Among many other professionals of the highest level of administration, who have more responsibility. And one of the main reasons that has led them to open this front war against Public Function is the proposal to change the current opposition system for which citizens become career officials.
For the highest level bodies, A1 and A2 (for the moment), the Government intends to replace these evidence with a two -year formation process in a free school of the state of future new creation where they will study a master’s degree. To access that school there will be a first selective test. The places of these centers will be higher than the job offers, so that the two years of training will be completed, another evidence will be done, as an opposition, which will rule who becomes an official and who does not. Those who do not exceed it will have a postgraduate title officially.
For Fedec, this new model will be “more expensive, more elitist and will not guarantee the constitutional principles of equality, merit and capacity” that govern the current oppositions to the State. But they also criticize the lack of dialogue and transparency with which the Executive is designing the changes.
To try to bring positions, the Ministry of State for Public Function, Clara Capelli, summoned the Fedeco to a meeting last Tuesday, July 29. But far from channeling a negotiation, the representatives of this union of senior officials came out with more complaints. “In that meeting we verify the lack of willingness to dialogue from the Secretary of State for Public Function,” Fedeca sources indicate.
However, Capelli herself stressed in this meeting that this project is “a road map (not a regulatory project already written) that is manufactured under consensus” and “with the incorporation of more than 400 contributions from professionals from public administrations, trade union, business and civil society organizations.” Moreover, he explained “one by one”, they add in the ministry, the “almost thirty meetings held since February 2024 with Fedeca and the associations that are part of it.”
Despite this argument of the Secretary of State, Fedeca’s criticism of the lack of dialogue is shared by sources of the UGT union, who assure that “the Government did not inform the unions on the changes in the selection processes announced”, so they are studying the measure and will be pronounced later on their specific content.
The complaints
Apart from the ways, these representatives of the senior officials say that “they do not oppose change” in the functioning of the administration. In fact, they say that “they have bought” 17 of the 18 projects that form the global proposal and only reject the one that completely remodes the personnel selection system and access to the public square. Moreover, they explain that their main complaint is that the Government has not contributed in this negotiation “the evidence that demonstrates that the current opposition access system does not work well and that the model that proposes the current deficiencies.”
From Public Function, they say that these evidence not only exist, but at the meeting last Tuesday, those responsible for FEDECA were informed that “they will send them the data in which they have been based to make the proposal.”
In the absence of these data, in Fedec, they insist that this new system is less equal, and gives less transparency to the selective process and less guarantees in the evaluation. “With the current opposition model we all go through the same threshing, the son of a manager and that of a goalkeeper, but with the new system two years of maintenance will be paid to attend the future school, which, of course, will not be present throughout Spain. It will not be cheaper as the Ministry says, it will be more elitist,” sources of this union indicate.
Moreover, given the government’s arguments to defend the new model – it stands that the current opposition system is very individualistic and future officials do not learn to work as a team – Fedec sentence: “Less they will learn in a school that will be like the hunger games, because you will be competing with your own training partner.” In addition, they question the model of courts they propose by considering them less guaranteed and transparent than the current ones.
But those responsible for the executive emphasize, on the other hand, in access to higher bodies through state free training “will guarantee maximum rigor and competitive tension, while reinforcing equal opportunities.” In their opinion, these schools (whose courses can also be followed online, predictably), which will be accompanied by a “powerful” scholarship systems, will serve to order the current tangle of preparatory academies, among other things.
Along the same lines, in the CSIF official union they consider the proposal to change the opposition model as an “improvisation” and a “nonsense” by the Ministry. Moreover, they interpret that the document contributed by the Executive extends to all the bodies of the State Administration the new public school training system and not only for the A1 and A2, but also for the C1 and C2.
“If they make the change, it will mean discouragement to the public administration, because to enter the school, it will already have to be prepared as for an opposition and, even so, access to a place will not be guaranteed, not even after the two years of training,” sources of this center need.
Other criticisms
That said, the rest of criticisms from other unions are more generalist and cover a greater number of issues. For example, CSIF makes an amendment to the entire government project to modernize the state administration: “What we are clear is that this will not solve the serious problems of our administrations and its professionals,” said the president of this central, Miguel Borra.
Thus, they criticize that it does not address the template deficit and the forecast that 60% of the officials will retire in 10 years; nor that temporality continues to touch 30%; nor the slowness of the selective processes that cause thousands of places every year; Neither salary improvements or salary inequality between administrations.
For its part, UGT complains that the document presented on the 21st of this month has experienced a “pruning” of improvements that did appear in other initial versions known previously. Among them, the increase in the budget to pay salaries, the return to the 35 -hour day, or the regulation of teleworking, among other issues.
