The Ministry of Public Function and the three most representative unions in the Administration, CSIF, UGT and CC OO, met this Wednesday to address the salary increase of more than three million public workers. As explained, it proposes a multi-year increase with a fixed component and a variable component, “so that public employees do not lose purchasing power.” That is, salaries grow at least as much as prices. This multi-year agreement, as detailed by the unions, would cover from 2026 to 2028. Both parties point out that figures have not yet been discussed and that, according to the unions, this will be finalized in a meeting they will hold on November 19. Negotiation sources indicate that the Public Service is awaiting the margin given by the Treasury to detail the proposal for increases.
Neither the unions nor the Executive have raised figures at the meeting, according to the negotiators, but the Public Service has detailed in a statement that the increase will at least match the evolution of prices: “The objective is to establish a multi-year framework that includes salary increases linked to a fixed and a variable component, in such a way that public employees do not lose purchasing power.”
“In the salary block we thought that today there could be something, but they have told us that they are in a position to give us a few digits. What all the union organizations have made clear is that the year 2025 has to have the salary increase well differentiated. It cannot remain a year of freezing,” said the UGT representative, Isabel Araque. The previous agreement between officials and the ministry (signing CC OO and UGT but not CSIF) marked the increases from 2022 to 2024. Once fulfilled, the plants ask that 2025 not be left in limbo. “The first meeting was not bad,” Araque stressed, before specifying that the table is structured in three blocks: salaries, employment and rights.
Lucho Palazzo, from CC OO, has highlighted that the Government is “late” to this negotiation, which it had been postponing with the excuse that the increase would be part of the new General State Budgets. Faced with the increasingly unlikely possibility of moving them forward (), the unions insisted on separating both folders. “With the economic data that this country has, with the Government saying that we are going like a shot, we have 3.5 million public employees with frozen salaries,” this union member added.
For his part, the CSIF negotiator, Francisco Lama, has assessed the start of negotiations “positively”, but expresses “concern” over the failure to specify the increase in the first meeting. “We demand improvements in retirement, working hours or teleworking. And we want the agreement to have retroactive effects applicable to all of 2025,” Lama added. His union highlights that the agreement will have a fixed economic part and another variable, “which we are currently unaware of,” and warns that the mobilizations will depend on the progress of the negotiation.
In a press release, the ministry headed by Óscar López has confirmed that it is proposing a multi-year agreement, but without specifying in which years. “The agreement that the Public Service wants to reach with the union centers also contemplates a set of organizational improvements, as well as continuing to advance in the consolidation of the rights of public employees,” highlights the ministry.
