The temporary rate in the public sector reached 32.5% in the first quarter of 2022an all-time high since the series began two decades ago, exceeding the rate in the private sector by more than ten points, where temporary employment was 22.1% in the same period.
The interim in the Public Administrations has gone from 30.4% in the first quarter of 2021, to 31% at the end of that year and to 32.5% in the first quarter of 2022, reaching the total number of public employees with a contract temporary to 1.13 million, according to the latest data from the Active Population Survey (EPA).
Conversely, the temporary employment rate in the private sector has fallen almost two points, going from 23.9% at the end of 2021 to 22.1% in the first quarterthanks to the effect of the labor reform, in force on December 31, which has significantly limited temporary hiring.
The increase in temporary contracts in the Administration responds, as explained to EFE by the secretary of Public Policies of the FSC-CCOO, Miriam Pinillos, to the “delay in the calls for public employment offers and in the implementation of the processes of job stabilization.
Temporality is not the same at all levels of the public sphere, since it is around 10% in the General State Administration (AGE), above 30% in the autonomous communities and 25% in the Local Administration, according to the figures handled by CSIF.
Gender and age gap
Temporality in the public sector presents a evident gender gap, 24% for men and 38.5% for womensomething that CSIF attributes to the fact that “sectors such as education and health are very feminized and are the ones that receive the greatest impact of temporality”.
This gap intensifies among those under 25 years of age, with a temporality of 86.7%, which escalates to 92.6% in the case of women under that age.
For CSIF, the generation gap is also due to the functioning of sectors such as health and educationand denounces that access to “fundamental areas of the welfare state” often occurs through a fixed-term contract.
CCOO adds that there is a structural demand that public employment offers do not cover, since for years the replacement rate was suppressed and the workload has increased.
Stabilization Agreement
Temporality is a problem that the Administration has been dragging for decades, although did not exceed the 30% barrier until the first quarter of last year.
Since 2002, temporary employment has only dropped by 20% in six quarters between 2012 and 2014despite the fact that in 2017 the then Minister of Finance and Public Administration, Cristóbal Montoro, signed an agreement with the unions to reduce the interim to 8%.
The current Government also committed to reducing temporary employment in the public sector with a law of urgent measures approved in July 2021 and processed as a bill in Parliament, which includes the agreement between the Executive and the unions to achieve that 8% before 2025.
The text contemplates that the interim positions considered structural, some 300,000, must be awarded before December 31, 2024, for which all processes must be approved and published before June 1, 2022 and convened before December 31, 2022. 2022.
This new stabilization process will be contest-opposition for those who have been temporarily and uninterruptedly employed for three years as of December 31, 2020with experience being a determining element for the assessment.
The vacancies that have been temporarily and uninterruptedly occupied since before January 1, 2016 will be convened only by the competition system on an exceptional basis.
Not passing the process will lead to dismissal with compensation of 20 days of fixed remuneration per year worked, although those who do not participate in the selection process will not be financially compensated.
To avoid the same problem in the future, the law establishes that vacancies will only be filled with interim personnel when it is not possible to do so with career officials and for a maximum period of three years.
The unions ask for commitment and will
Despite the approval of the law, Pinillos (CCOO) considers that “many administrations” have not yet complied with the stabilization processalthough he assures that “if they comply, without a doubt at the end of the process in 2024 the objective of ending the scourge of temporality will be fulfilled”.
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The secretary of Union Action of UGT Public Services, Isabel Araque understands that the fundamental thing, once the decree law has been approved, is that the administrations have “the will to want to end once and for all with temporality.”
Public Function sources have reminded EFE that it is each administration (state, regional or local) that convenes the tests corresponding to its own bodies or personnel scales and the one that has to comply with the law, without for the moment having the data on how many stabilization places have already been convened.