CCOO denounces the Foreign Ministry’s decision to exclude personnel abroad from its labor improvement plan

Eduardo González The Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) union has denounced the exclusion of "all personnel assigned to the Foreign Service" from the Social Action Plan recently approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the 2025 fiscal year. The Social Action Plan is the governing document for improving the working conditions and well-being of public employees in all State Departments. According to the CCOO, in a press release this past Tuesday, Foreign Affairs is "the only Ministry that excludes its staff abroad from its Social Action Plan." The rest of the ministerial departments, it continued, "expressly include staff working abroad in their respective plans." With this, the various Ministries comply with "the provisions of section 13 of the Agreement of the General Negotiating Committee of the General State Administration on the working conditions of personnel working abroad, signed on December 3, 2007, and published in the Official State Gazette of February 8, 2008." In contrast, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs "discriminates against more than 81.38% of its workforce, leaving them without access to the aid provided for in the Plan, while only 18.62% of the personnel assigned to the Central Services can benefit from 100% of the available funds." "This situation contrasts sharply with that of 2009, when the Foreign Service represented 73.69% of the workforce and had access to 44.7% of the budget allocated to Social Action," the union adds. With its decision to exclude personnel abroad, the CCOO continues, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs "violates the principles of equality, universality, and comprehensiveness that should govern Social Action in the Public Administration, as established by the Resolution of July 28, 2011, of the Secretary of State for the Civil Service, which approves and publishes the Agreement of July 27, 2011, of the General Negotiating Committee of the General State Administration on common criteria applicable to Social Action Plans." Labor personnel are the group of workers in the Spanish Public Administration who do not have the status of civil servants, who are governed by the Workers' Statute and who have an employment contract that establishes their working conditions, salary, and labor rights. "The exclusion of our group is not an isolated incident this year," the CCOO denounced. "It has been ongoing since 2013, when all funding for Social Action in the Foreign Service was eliminated," it continued. “Since then, and despite the repeated demands made in subsequent negotiations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Employment (MAEC) has consistently refused to restore the corresponding budget allocations, allocating 100% of the Social Action budget solely to Central Services personnel,” it warned. In response to this “new violation of rights,” the State Union Section of the Foreign Service of the FSC-CCOO has filed an Appeal for Reconsideration against the 2025 Social Action Plan “with the aim of reversing this unjustified exclusion from the Foreign Service.” “At the same time, and beyond this avenue already underway,” the union does not rule out “taking other legal or administrative actions” to “put an end, once and for all, to this grave injustice.”

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