<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Comisiones Obreras (CCOO, Workers' Commissions) union has warned that the government's recent approval of an additional 0.5% salary increase for public employees "comes too late" and is "manifestly insufficient" for foreign workers, who "bear the impact of more than a decade of unfair wage freezes."</strong></h4> The government's decision, approved on July 1 by the Council of Ministers at the proposal of the Ministry of Finance, will benefit more than three million people working for public administrations or institutions across the country and builds on the Framework Agreement for a 21st-Century Administration, signed in October 2022 between the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, and the unions CCOO and UGT. In a press release, the CCOO foreign service section warned that this measure, which will have retroactive effect from January 1, 2024, "comes too late" and, in "the case of the PLEX (Foreign Labor Personnel) group, is manifestly insufficient." "We are referring to an area that is suffering the impact of more than a decade of unfair freezes, a deeply unfair reality that is worsening in an increasingly adverse international context, marked by the sustained increase in the cost of living, the loss of purchasing power associated with the fluctuation of current currencies, and global insecurity itself," the union continued. "All of this has a direct impact on those who provide services in the General State Administration centers abroad, creating a particularly vulnerable situation that requires more specific and structural responses," it added. Therefore, CCOO-Exterior warned, "this increase cannot be understood in any case as a solution, but rather as an essential minimum that must be accompanied by urgent measures adapted to the complexity of the PLEX." In this regard, the union stated that it will continue "to demand full compliance with the Administration-Union Agreement of December 18, 1990, in force according to repeated court rulings, and which establishes the obligation to annually review remuneration country by country." Likewise, the union resolutely demanded "the immediate update of the PLEX Working Conditions Agreement, an essential instrument that has not been reviewed for more than fifteen years and whose obsolescence is now unsustainable." "It is unacceptable to continue ignoring the reality of workers abroad, nor to continue postponing a collective bargaining agreement that has been blocked for too long," it added. For all these reasons, CCOO-Exterior warned that it is "time" for the Administration to "seriously and with commitment assume the need to update the PLEX regulatory framework to guarantee decent working conditions aligned with the realities of the 21st century" and to openly recognize "the strategic value that personnel working abroad contribute to the service of the State in more than 130 countries, supporting, often in precarious conditions, Spain's foreign action in the world."
