VALENCIA. The pandemic of coronavirus, the consequent state of alarm decreed by the central government and the obligatory adaptation of the administration to these circumstances is leaving many questions on the way. It has already occurred with the recoverable paid permit decreed by the central executive, whose application in officials was the cause of a legal dispute between the Ministry of Public Function and the Valencian generalitat along with other entities such as Valencia City Council.
Now, in the consistory of the cap i casal a new debate opens, in this case outside the legal field: the possibility that those officials without tasks due to the state of alarm lose or see their complement of professional activity, in the end complement of productivity, related to these weeks in which many public employees have not been able to go to their job or have been able to benefit from teleworking due to the nature of their functions.
This is a plus regulated by regulations which rewards “the degree of interest, initiative or effort with which the civil servants carry out their work and the performance or results obtained”. It should not be a fixed or periodic amount, but in practice, union sources explain, it is charged transversely and regularly, in four payments throughout the year, and usually amounts to an average of about 300 euros per pay.
It is this section of the salary of the officials on which the debate now hangs, after the government team opened the door to review this point among the measures to be implemented during the coronavirus crisis. Thus, a mid-April resolution of the city’s mayor, Joan Ribó, explains that “the different situations foreseen […] will be valued, according to the relationships that the service headquarters make and send […], for the purposes of accrual of the professional activity complement during the corresponding period “.
In other words, the heads of each service, at the request of the Department of Personnel that directs Luisa Notary, will draw up a list of the situation in which each of their employees finds themselves to verify which ones would be entitled to collect this bonus and which ones would not. It is not, as they confirm in the consistory, something that is going to be done with security, but the unions consider it an open door to the reduction or the suppression of the complement for those officials who have not worked these weeks.
So much so that the five union sections represented in the consistory -CCOO, UGT, Intersindical, CSIF and SPPLB- issued a statement in which they opposed this possibility outright. In the letter, they insist on their opposition to “any action involving loss of remuneration“Considering that” the effects of this sanitary crisis should not fall on the municipal staff. “” All personnel are fully at the disposal of the corporation to guarantee the labor needs that ensure the operation of public services, “the union organizations declared. .
The arguments in favor of applying this measure include considering “a comparative grievance” the collection of this supplement by those officials who are not working with respect to those who “are leaving their skin” during these days. As this newspaper has learned, there are delegations in which the discomfort of some public employees who continue to attend their job has been noted. This would be a way of rewarding, in practice, what is considered an effort by this group of officials.
Likewise, the very nature of the complement, which is that of reward productivity of work, would make their payment incompatible when this productivity is zero, either because the tasks of some workers cannot continue to be carried out -for example, in museums or libraries, among many others-, or because they have not been able to enable telecommuting from the consistory. In this regard, it must be remembered that of the 5,000 employees of the València City Council, more than 2,000 They have received a license to continue their work from home.
This will be a matter to be resolved between the Company Committee of the City Council and the Department of Personnel and will be added to other issues such as the aforementioned recoverable paid leave, which the consistory is willing to apply, negotiated with the unions, despite the refusal The Ministry of Public Function reiterated that the permit be applied in public administrations.
The legal debate between those who believe that this possibility does not exist and those who consider that it has not ceased, but the consistory has decided to apply it, so that those employees without tasks during this period must recover the hours when everything returns to normal. Now we need to know how the hours will be recovered, and this is what the negotiating table between the Committee and the Notary Department will have to elucidate.
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