The Government and the unions have sealed this Wednesday the agreement by which the right to partial retirement of public employees is recovered so that they can make part-time work compatible with the collection of part of the pension, linkable with a relief performed by another worker.
The pact signed by the Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Service, Óscar López, the Secretary General of UGT Public Services, Julio Lacuerda, and the Public Area Coordinator of CCOO, Luciano Palazzo, arrives after weeks of negotiations and complies with a historic claim of the collective as well as of both unions as well as one of the commitments included in the Framework Agreement for a 21st Century Administration, signed with the same unions in 2022.
The agreement will be finalized with the modification of the Consolidated Text of the Basic Statute of Public Employees. “With this agreement we recover a right suppressed with the adjustment and austerity measures adopted by the previous Government in 2012, while at the same time we eliminate an unjustified asymmetry with private sector workers,” said the minister during the signing of the agreement.
The objective of reincorporating this figure into the public sector is to facilitate the transition between active life and retirement – as occurs in the private sector – and guarantee the transfer of knowledge between generations. In this sense, López has indicated that “it is also about promoting the transfer of knowledge in the public sector between the most veteran workers and the new generations.”
The ‘reliever’ will be regulated as career civil servant personnel
The agreement also contemplates that, in the case of the public sector, the figure of the ‘reliever’ will be regulated as career civil servant personnel, and a forecast of the corresponding places must be given in public employment offers or equivalent planning instruments for the year in which retirement is going to occur. As these are planned positions, it is guaranteed that this retirement formula does not generate additional budgetary costs.
The agreement provides that partial retirement in the public sector is adapted to what is established “in the Social Security and Passive Classes legislation, with the necessary regulatory adaptations.” The reference is the new regulatory framework for partial retirement agreed upon at the social dialogue table by the Government, the business organizations CEOE and Cepyme and the union organizations UGT and CCOO on July 31, 2024.
The pact implies the commitment to immediately transfer the content of the agreement to the general negotiation table of the Public Administrations to begin the process of modifying the regulations.
Government and unions agree to recover the right to partial retirement of civil servants