The unions UGT, CCOO, STEI and CSIF have announced mobilizations to demand that all public employees in the Balearic Islands receive the same insularity bonus, regardless of their professional category. These organizations have criticized the Government of Marga Prohens for having suspended the negotiation of the general agreement and have accused the Executive of giving in to the interests of the medical, nursing and education unions.
The protests will be “progressive” and will begin with an informative assembly next Thursday, February 20, in Mallorca. There they will explain, according to the unions, all the improvements that have been left in the air after the agreement was truncated.
According to the agreement that was about to be closed, all regional public employees would receive an insularity bonus of 205 euros in Mallorca, 410 in Menorca and Ibiza and 615 in Formentera. This measure would imply that a janitor or an auxiliary would be paid the same as a doctor or a teacher, which has generated a strong confrontation between unions.
During the press conference they gave this Thursday, representatives of the four union organizations have blamed Satse, Simebal and ANPE for “illegitimately interfering” in a negotiation that had been going on for about a year and a half”. The representative of UGT, Miquel Angel Romero, said: “We know that there are organizations outside the Bureau of public employees who had pressured the Government, which has succumbed to pressure. I believe that the Govern has made an important strategic error”. He also stressed that it is “radically false” that the agreement that was on the table, pending “four bangs”, was detrimental to the groups of nurses, doctors and teachers.
In addition, he used a quote from the writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán to describe the situation: “It is no more offensive to a rich man than for a poor man to piss in his bathroom”, in reference to the refusal of some unions to equalize the insularity bonus among all categories.
More reviews
In the same vein, the secretary general of the Federation of Citizen Services CCOO, Pep Ginard, has argued that the text in which they were working “substantially improved the conditions of all types of public employees” of the Balearic Islands.
This is due, he argued, to the fact that the insularity bonus was substantially increased for all of them, an expectation that had been put on the table by the regional executive itself. “But the class organizations, which defend the interests of elitist groups, have truncated the possibility that workers see their paychecks improved,” said Ginard.
In addition, the CCOO representative added, the insularity bonus is intended to compensate the high cost of living in the archipelago, and this does not affect issues such as training or work dedication, an argument put forward by Simebal to reject the equalization for all civil servants.
“We broke with this concept, thinking that there should not be distinctions by groups. It is not related to workload or effort, that goes somewhere else. We wonder if the administration, which agreed that everyone should be paid the same, continues to propose a class-based structure for this compensation,” said the secretary general of STEI, Miquel Gelabert.
In addition to these three unions, Gelabert has blamed the Govern for suspending the negotiation ‘sine die’. “Yesterday it became evident that the Bureau of public employees is directed from the Consolat de Mar,” he said.
Union war over the insularity bonus
While UGT, CCOO, STEI and CSIF blame the Govern for having paralyzed the negotiation, the unions Satse (nursing) and ANPE (education) have described as “completely ridiculous” that they are responsible for the failure of the agreement when they are not part of the Bureau of Public Employees.
The secretary general of Satse, Jorge Tera, has assured that “it does not make sense that the failure of a negotiation of four unions falls on others who were not even in the Table”. For his part, the president of ANPE, Víctor Villatoro, pointed out that the Govern has decided to listen to all the union forces before closing a definitive pact.
These unions insist that the insularity bonus should take into account the professional category, as they consider it unfair that all public employees receive the same amount without considering their responsibilities or level of qualification.
Meanwhile, the negotiation of the public sector legislature pact is still up in the air after its indefinite postponement. This pact included, among other measures, the return of the 2.9% salary cut and improvements in the residence allowance.
