Staff in Argentina./ Photo: Spanish Foreign Service on strike
The Diplomat. 02/07/2018
A group of staff in more than 50 countries have signed a manifest announcing their intention of organizing and coordinating joint actions and strategies to “move towards a fair Foreign Service, in which the rights of the staff are respected, which is modern and at the service of the citizens”.
“The current model of Foreign Service is obsolete, dysfunctional, unfair, unstructured and does not have the necessary cohesion between the different organizations making up a General Administration of the State abroad”, the manifest Other Foreign Service is Possible reads.
“Good proof of that”, it continues, “are the arbitrariness and abuse taking place in it, the chaotic and unsystematic performance typical of the Foreign Service, or the contempt towards the staff and their rights used quite frequently”. “It is obvious that this dysfunctional, disorganized and dated model does not transmit a positive message abroad or one that can be associated to an advanced country”, it adds.
The signatories also denounce the existence of “an opaque and unfair payment system that is arbitrary most of the times and not adapted to reality and the cost of living in each country”.
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They demand a reform of payments, union elections, inspections and respect for the labor legislation
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“Indefinite strikes of staff carried out in 2017 in Australia, Argentine (more than a month), Sweden, of Instituto Cervantes in Brazil (more than two months) and the successful world strike abroad on 16-O prove the excess and desperate situation in which the staff abroad are”, the manifesto continues.
Therefore, the manifesto claims a “deep reform” of the Foreign Service through a series of “shock” measures, standing out the adaptation of payments, “adapted to the real cost of living that we have to face” and that includes “an immediate salary update for the staff abroad that compensate the loss of purchasing power suffered since 2009”.
Furthermore, the signatories claim union elections for the staff abroad “with all the guarantees”, the implementation of a system of inspection, control and supervision of the functioning of the Foreign Service, in order to avoid “arbitrariness, embezzlement, perversion of justice and abuse of power”, and the “scrupulous respect for the applicable legislation, the Spanish and the local one, relating to labor rights and work contracts”.
