<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) union has denounced that the Public Employment Offer (OEP) for the 2025 financial year, recently published in the Official State Gazette (BOE), "for the umpteenth time" keeps workers working abroad (PLEX) "outside of internal promotion processes."</strong></h4> In a statement published last Wednesday in relation to Royal Decree 651/2025, which approves the Public Employment Offer for the 2025 financial year, CCOO-Exterior denounces that this "systematic exclusion, sustained for years, violates fundamental rights, hinders the professional development of a group essential to the State's foreign action, and exacerbates the existing inequality with respect to government personnel in Spain." This is one of the main reasons why CCOO has refused to sign the 2025 OEP, since "we cannot support an offer that institutionalizes structural discrimination against workers abroad." According to CCOO, the State Secretariat for Civil Service has been excluding the PLEX group from internal promotion calls since 2019. This situation led CCOO-Exterior to file an administrative appeal, which achieved partial annulment of the call for applications due to a violation of the right to collective bargaining. "Despite this, the Administration did not rectify its position: in 2021, it again excluded our group from the OEP, which constituted a direct violation of the principle of equal treatment," the union lamented. In response to this reiteration, CCOO-Exterior filed a new lawsuit requesting the annulment of the discriminatory provisions and the restoration of the group's right to participate on equal terms with the rest of the staff of the General State Administration (AGE) in Spain. CCOO also recalls that, in November 2022, an agreement was signed between the Administration and the most representative trade union organizations (CCOO, UGT, and CSIF) aimed at advancing the inclusion of staff working abroad in internal promotion processes. However, it asserted, this commitment "has been repeatedly breached since its signing, without any progress having been made in its implementation." "The publication of the 2025 OEP not only confirms this non-compliance, but also represents a further example of the institutional disinterest in a highly qualified and experienced group, which continues to be systematically excluded from basic professional development mechanisms," it denounced.
