COVID-19, Quality employment, Spain

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

After the surge in remote working as a result of the pandemic, trade unions in Ireland, Russia and Spain have welcomed new initiatives, including legislation and collective agreements, that regulate telework. Research by the Eurofound research agency also looks into the negative and positive implications of telework for workers’ autonomy and work-life balance raising again the challenges to ensure that workers have control over their working time and underlining the importance of current discussions at European level on the right to disconnect.

Health and social care unions in the Basque region have been involved in a series of protests and strikes. Mobilisations in public health during December and January will culminate in a day of strike action on 28 January. The unions are angry about the failure of the public health system to honour basic rights to information and collective bargaining. They are concerned about the impact of the pandemic on the system and the way that management have responded by taking unilateral decisions on working conditions, health and safety and precarious employment. Two days earlier, on 26 January unions

Nine unions representing health workers in the Basque region – ELA, SATSE, LAB, SME, UGT, CCOO, ESK, SAE and UTESE – are calling for urgent action to increase funding for healthcare and deal with staff shortages. Strikes took place on 29 October in the Araba province, on 5 November in Gipuzkoa and then on 12 November further action is due in Bizkaia. The unions say that the public health system is facing a serious situation across primary care, hospitals and mental health. Workers are physically and emotionally exhausted because of high workloads with further problems arising from high rates

The FSC-CCOO and FeSP-UGT public service federations have criticised the government for failing to address major problems of recruitment and promotion in the state administration. They say that around 43000 jobs – nearly 20% of the total – have been cut over the last 10 years and the situation now poses a threat to service delivery including in some key COVID-19-related work. The unions want to see the appointment of 20000 employees, promotion for around 14000 and permanent status for around 5000 temporary workers. There has been a severe delay in appointing or promoting people who have been

The FeSP-UGT public service federations and two federations from the CCOO confederation have joined with the Aeste and Asade employer organisations to draft an emergency plan for residential and home care services. The objective is to prevent any recurrence of the massive impact of COVID-19 on the sector both in terms of service users and workers. The unions and employers underline the role of government and the importance of increased funding, noting that the sector has seen EUR 5.9 billion worth of cuts since 2012. The joint plan emphasises the importance of applying collective agreements

The FeSP-UGT public service federation has sent a number of key demands to the public service ministry for a new agreement covering public sector workers. The union wants action on improving employment conditions and reducing precarious employment but also has a number of specific proposals on telework, noting that the estimated impact of COVID-19 has been an increase from 26,000 to more than 450,000 public employees doing telework. Among the key demands are action to balance security and flexibility with increased productivity; voluntary nature of telework; equality of rights with other

in a meeting with the Ministry of Health on 13 May, the FSS-CCOO and FeSP-UGT health sector federations have called for action on staffing and pay and conditions across the sector. In particular, the FSS-CCOO demanded that the Ministry of Health schedule negotiations covering the National Health Service (SNS). The union is unhappy that it was only on 13 May that negotiations have been convened during the entire period of the crisis. The federations want to see an extension of contracts until the end of the year for all those employed on temporary contracts to help deal with the crisis. This

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 FSC-CCOO and FeSP-UGT public service federations have been setting out key demands in relation to the rules that should apply before a return to work in public administration. The FSC-CCOO is highly critical of the return-to-work plan drawn up by the government which it says fails to take account of key advice from the ministry of health. It also points out that there is nothing in the plan in relation to telework which is currently being done by around 60% of public administration workers. The union says that while issue of technical support and health and safety were not fully dealt with