The Government delays the confirmation of the salary increase for civil servants and puzzles the social agents

The expenditure projection made by the Government and sent to Brussels as an approach to face 2021 has generated confusion among social agents, who do not succeed in fitting it with the information transmitted by the Executive or consider it far from reality.

An example is that of salary increases for civil servants. In the document released yesterday by the Ministry of Finance, the impact of the increase in public wages in 2020 is estimated at 3,340 million, although for next year the forecast is zero.

To date, the Government it has never announced a public salary freeze, but it has not announced a raise either. The official explanation about the planned expenses is that this year the salary increase agreements agreed with the officials in 2018 conclude and, for the moment, there is no forecast to extend them. In fact, together with the lower hiring of health personnel due to the improvement in the situation due to the pandemic, it represents the main reason for savings in this chapter.

The measure represents a significant decrease in spending planned for next year. “The compensation of employees goes from 12.9% of GDP in 2020 to 12% of GDP in 2021. This evolution responds to the completion, on the one hand, of the Second Agreement for the improvement of public employment of March 2018 in force for the 2018-2020 period and, on the other, of the salary equalization of the State Security Forces and Bodies for the same period, “the document explains.

Despite this approach, the general secretary of CCOO, Unai Sordo, has stated today that the Government has transferred to its union that it is not thinking of freezing the salaries of public employees in 2021, reports Europa Press.

“He swears and perjures us that he is not in those and that in no case is he thinking of a salary freeze,” he stressed at a breakfast organized by the New Economy Forum.

His words have been endorsed by the Secretary of State for Employment, JoaquÃn PÃ © rez Rey, who has intervened in this act to ensure that the Government’s purposes do not include freezing the salaries of civil servants. In any case, Sordo has been “concerned” about the ‘probe balloons’ that are being launched in this regard.

SMEs also do not see in the document any of the messages that the Government has sent them over the last few months. “The stimulus measures for companies are not seen,” says the President of Cepyme, Gerardo Cuerva.

“In the absence of knowing the details, we miss the inclusion of a forceful plan of measures to help companies resist. If, in the face of a first wave, two key measures were approved, which were the ertes and ICOs, in the face of a second wave and with a very worrying situation of attrition in companies, plans to stimulate demand should be included, but also new measures to prevent devastating destruction of the productive fabric “, he affirms.

For their part, the self-employed give little credit to the government’s 2021 budget approach. In particular, ERTE benefits to salaried employees go from 17,840 million this year to just 718 million and those that are destined to self-employed workers, from 5,339 million to 400 million. The exemptions for companies and workers affected fall from 9,000 million to 600 million euros. The president of your main association, Lorenzo Love, has called the plan “fiction”. “To think that in 2021 there will be less spending on unemployment than in 2020 is very voluntary but unrealistic … Just talk to the self-employed employers and ask them.”

The reduction in unemployment spending would mean going from spending equivalent to 3.7% of GDP this year to 1.5% next year, which is equivalent to projecting that in 2021 it would return to the situation prior to the pandemic. It is an estimate that could imply that The expenditure that has been made this year in deploying income protection systems agreed with the social agents and that is in force until January, will be minimum in 2021.