Everything indicates that the advanced calling of elections will make impossible the agreement to strengthen the Labor Inspection reached in 2021, which the unions have been demanding for months, but which the strike that started yesterday has few options to solve. “We are pessimistic”, point out CSIF, one of the convening unions. “Time is running out”, they acknowledge from the UGT.
For the unions, the response to the call was positive, with a follow-up numbering between 70 and 75% of the workforce, and that, according to some, if it has not been higher it is because of high minimum services. “The inspectors and sub-inspectors have not worked”, add these sources.
The unions were confident in a meeting of the interministerial remuneration commission (Cecir) on Wednesday and that a new proposal would be presented there. But yesterday the Ministry of Finance stated that it was not aware of this call and that this body depends on the Public Service.
In this way, the short margin of time left by the election call and the confrontation between the two ministries responsible for the issue complicate an exit. Sources from the Ministry of Labor, with Yolanda Díaz at the head, to whom the Inspection depends, have openly accused the Ministry of Finance, led by the socialist María Jesús Montero, of preventing the agreement, and allege political motives. On May 24, Labor emphasized how a salary agreement was reached with judges and prosecutors that affected Justice and the pact with Social Security inspectors with an impact on Inclusion, that is, two socialist ministries; while the conflict with a Podemos ministry remains open.
The discomfort at the Ministry of Labor is particularly intense because they have repeatedly highlighted the tasks of the inspection to achieve the regularization of irregular situations, especially in the field of recruitment, and have always expressed the desire to strengthen a service that, here all agree, he is under-equipped in relation to the needs to carry out his task in an efficient manner. It has a workforce of 3,000 workers, of which around 2,200 are inspectors and sub-inspectors.
The agreement between the unions and the Spanish Government in 2021 entailed a reorganization of the structure of the department, an improvement of the conditions and also a reinforcement of the workforce. It is what the unions consider to have been breached repeatedly and which they now fear that, with the calling of elections, it will remain for another legislature.
From the Ministry of Labor they state that they have once again insisted to their Finance colleagues on “the insufficiency of the proposal” and have required them to present a new one “that incorporates the sub-inspectors, the administrative staff and that fulfills the strategic plan published in the BOE”.
