Two months ago, the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration of Elma Saiz opened a negotiation table in which both employers and unions are represented to address the priority issues in its portfolio. The Secretary of State for Social Security and Pensions, Borja Suárez, placed three matters on the roadmap to follow during the calendar of meetings: the use of mutual insurance companies to deal with sick leave due to trauma, the reducing coefficients to access retirement early retirement and partial retirement reform. However, progress has only been made on the first two, given that the Government has not presented any text on the gradual exit from the labor market associated with a replacement contract.
The social agents attended the last of these appointments in the hope of finally knowing what the Ministry’s position was on partial retirement, which is now open to all workers, but conditional on reaching an agreement with the employer. However, the ‘number two’ of Social Security did not bring a text to the meeting on March 4, which is why union sources are putting off signing an agreement until this issue has been addressed in depth. “There will be no partial agreements” they warn. “We will not sign an agreement on the use of mutual insurance companies and reducing coefficients with the promise of addressing the partial retirement reform later,” they say, referring to the fact that everything must be included in the same standard.
The Workers’ Representatives Do Not Want to Venture to Measure What the Impact of the Electoral Concessions This Table Will Be, But They Trust the Government to Maintain its Commitment to Address These Pending Issues and Remember that Social Security is About to Exceed the Term of a year in which it had to present the regulatory framework for the partial retirement pension in the Toledo Pact. This is a commitment reflected in the first additional provision of the second part of the pension reform, approved in March 2023, but for which the agreement in social dialogue was established as a prerequisite.
This proposal will have to guarantee a “regime of effective compatibility of work and pension that preserves the quality of employment of relievers and balances the cost that this type of pension has for the system”, as indicated in royal decree-law 2/2023 . which urged us to take into account the impact it could have on different sectors, especially in the manufacturing industry. This sector has a special model recognized so that its workers can reduce their working hours and collect the pension proportional to the hours they stop working, while hiring a new worker to cover the rest of the working day; but this route has had to be extended ‘in extremis’ in 2022 and 2023, so the social agents want to leave the issue closed before the end of the year is approaching.
Social Security described the last meeting as “very productive” and assured that “important progress” had been made in a note confirming that partial retirement had not been addressed that afternoon. Saiz called another meeting two weeks later, which will presumably take place on March 18 and in which the parties to the social dialogue expect him to present his proposal. Until now, the portfolio has prioritized advancing possible collaboration with the mutual societies included in the Framework Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining, which could speed up the treatment of sick leave due to temporary disability and cut the increase in public spending associated with these delays. . that has produced the traffic jam in Primary Care.
However, the unions are not willing to settle the debate raised by the employers while the issues that concern them most remain at a stalemate. The issue of mutual insurance companies was one of the most difficult points to include in the framework agreement sealed by employers and unions in the month of May, a point that the workers’ representatives were pleased to include because it contributed to improving the health of the employees who cause sick leave due to temporary disability. Although they were closed to the possibility of including discharges of a nature other than trauma and also to the option that these services could grant discharge instead of doctors from the public health system.
Concern is shared by both ends of the negotiation table regarding the reducing coefficients for access to early retirement. Saiz has suggested to the negotiators that a series of objective parameters be established to determine which professions should have this avenue recognized, instead of closing the measure to specific groups, with the aim of providing legal guarantees. This is how the minister explained it when comparing her own request in the Senate Commission that addresses everything related to Social Security. The actors will measure the incidence of work accidents – whether minor, serious or fatal -, the persistence and duration of sick leave, as advanced by the socialist.
