Staffing levels, Demographic change, Spain

The public service federations in the UGT and CCOO confederations welcome the fact that their demands for public sector pay negotiations have been agreed by the government. The unions want a multiannual agreement that allows for the maintenance of purchasing power and, in particular, an increase this year on top of the 2% pay increase imposed by the government. CCOO and UGT want to see action to correct the long-term decline in purchasing power across the public sector, with foreign service personnel, for example not seeing an increase for 14 years. The unions want to ensure that the new

On 22 March trade unions, including FSS-CCOO and FeSP-UGT, will begin a joint campaign of mobilization of staff at the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate. It aims to put pressure on the government to abide by a collective agreement that was signed last year. The unions want action to address staff and material shortages that are having a major impact on service delivery. It argues that that the government needs to recognise the efforts made by staff in recent years to maintain the service and the fact that many workers are facing burnout. Demonstrations are planned across the country on

Five health unions (CCOO, SATSE, ELA, LAB and UGT) are continuing to work together in a long-running campaign to secure increased funding for primary care in the Basque region. Their latest initiative involves demonstrations at health centres right across the region on 22 December. The unions are calling for action on staffing with the creation of 1000 new posts, the transfer of thousands of temporary workers to permanent contracts and an end to excessive use of temporary hiring. The unions are also calling on other campaign groups to join the protests.

Workers in the SEPE public employment services are set to take two days of strike action in March to demand urgent action to address understaffing and overwork. The workers are represented by the FAC-USO public service union which has written to the Minister of Labour warning of the exhaustion faced by staff who have faced the massive increase in work over the past year in dealing with additional benefit payments and processes related to ERTE company restructuring schemes. So far, the ministry has acknowledged the problem of staffing but has not proposed a concrete solution. The union

The Sanidad-CCOO and FeSP-UGT public service federations have called for a range of actions in the elder care sector in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Both federations were already campaigning to secure better pay and conditions for the workforce, 90% of which are women. They both argue that the impact of the pandemic has further exposed the fundamental problems of low pay, inadequate staffing, stress, excessive workloads. These have been compounded by the lack of personal protective equipment and inadequate testing which have exposed both workers and service users to the virus. Key union

The CCOO-Sanidad health service union has repeated its call on the government to change the protocol on discharging health workers from treatment for COVID-19 and returning to work. The union argues that the procedure should be no different to that applying to other workers and that it is essential to ensure that health workers have completely recovered from infection. It warns that pressure to get health staff back to work has contributed to the 19400 health worker infections and 13 deaths. The federation has called for medical students in the final year of their studies to be called up to

The health and social service federations - CCOO-Sanidad and FeSP-UGT - are planning to mobilise workers in the care sector in March to put pressure on employers to negotiate a collective agreement. The unions will organise protests outside the head offices of the main companies in the sector highlighting the problems in relation to low pay, health and safety and inadequate staffing that face the 250,000 overwhelmingly women workers. The unions are also calling on the government to tackle underfunding of services and to ensure decent working conditions through procurement.

Latest figures on public sector employment show that the overall level has still not recovered from the impact of austerity with 112100 fewer in public sector employment than in 2011. The data also show the scale of the two major problems facing the sector - a continuing high level of temporary contracts (28.2%) and an ageing workforce. Workers aged under 30 make up only 7% of the workforce with those over 50 accounting for 43.6%. Young workers are also more than three times as likely to be on a temporary contract (78.9%).

The three main trade unions in the prisons sector - FSC-CCOO, FeSP-UGT and ACAIP - organised a 12-hour protest outside the head office of the prison service on 11 April. Over 200 trade unionists joined the demonstration, chaining themselves together. The unions are calling for proper negotiations to resolve some major problems in the sector including: massive staff shortages with 3200 vacant posts; the ageing workforce; privatisation; increasing violence and discrepancies in pay between the same jobs in different institutions.

The public service federations of the CCOO and UGT confederations organised a joint mobilisation of public administration workers on 29 November as part of their campaign for increased pay, more jobs and a return of rights lost during austerity. This followed a public-sector wide demonstration on 24 November with plans for further action on 14 December. The unions argue that services are under threat as 14% of jobs have been cut and reduced recruitment has created an ageing workforce where half are over 50. Since the 5% pay cut in 2010 there has been only a single pay increase of 1% while

The FeSP-UGT and CCOO federations in the public sector have come together to launch a campaign to get the government to negotiate over employment in the public sector and to adjust the budget for 2018 to begin to tackle the staffing crisis. The unions point out that not only have 350000 public sector jobs been cut since 2010 but the problem is being compounded by an ageing workforce. In social security, for example, around 48% of staff are set to retire over the next 10 years. The unions also want to ensure implementation of the agreement signed earlier this year to reduce the number of

The FSC-CCOO federation has analysed new data on public sector employment and found a worrying increase in temporary contracts. While over 58000 new workers have been taken on, more than 87% of these are on fixed-term contracts and this has taken the overall percentage of temporay contracts across the public administration from 22.9% to 24.1%. The data also shows an increase in the average age across the public administration with 43.1% now 50 or over.