The government admits that annual wage increases of EUR 52.11 or 2% will be increased or decreased after 2024. STE foresees an annual salary increase, until 2026, of 52.11 euros for gross monthly salaries to 2600 euros or 2% for higher salaries, giving an update between 8% and 2%, 3.9% on average, in line with inflation expected by the executive at 4% for 2023, but lower than this year’s index, which government estimates will be 7.4%.
However, “adjustments if there are deviations, maintenance of the principle of annual salary review based on expected inflation and the evolution of the economy” are being negotiated, revealed to DN / Dinheiro Vivo, the secretary general of the Federation of Public Administration Unions and Public Purpose Entities (FESAP), José Abraão. This means that the increases from 2024 may be higher or lower than EUR 52.11 or 2%. The guarantee is that everyone will receive a minimum wage increase of 208 euros between 2023 and 2026, almost double what was predicted given the evolution of the guaranteed minimum wage in the private sector, ultimately yielding a profit of 140 euros from the legislator.
This is a paradigm shift. In recent years, António Costa’s government has made civil service salary adjustments dependent on the average annual inflation recorded in November of the previous year, yielding an increase of 0.9% for this year, for example. Now, in addition to raising EUR 52.11 for wages to EUR 2,600 or 2% for salaries above that level, the executive has committed itself to the union structures that have signed the agreement that an annual review will be carried out that will be reconsidered into account. keep pace with expected inflation, as has been the case in the past.
The Union of State Technical Staff and Public Purpose Entities (STE) underlines that “this is not a closed negotiation process and that there will be more meetings this year and next year to assess the situation and the adequacy of employee valorisation,” it stressed to DN / Dinheiro Vivo the president of this union structure, Maria Helena Rodrigues.
While the salary updates in the agreement are still not fully satisfactory, FESAP and STE consider the approaches to some issues claimed by union structures as positive, such as the increase, already in January 2023, of €104.22 for most senior technicians: in all there are more than 60 thousand of the 76 thousand out there and those between the third position, with a salary of 1424.38 euros, and the fourteenth and last level of the career, with a salary of 3404.80 euros. With this measure, “the difference in salary related to technical assistants will exceed 400 euros”, according to the multi-year agreement to which DN/Dinheiro Vivo had access.
Technical assistants will also be entitled to an additional 104.22 euros, through the additional allocation of one level of the Single Remuneration Table, guaranteeing a two-level differentiation, i.e. of more than 100 euros compared to operational assistants, in accordance with the same document.
The multi-year agreement also provides for the valuation of the seniority of operational assistants with a career of more than 15 or more than 30 years. In the first case, the employees will jump one level up and receive another 52.11 euros, and in the second case, the salary increase will be 104.22 euros, in addition to the regular update of wages with 52.11 euros.
As already known, the meal allowance will grow by EUR 0.43 in 2023 and retroactive to October this year, from EUR 4.77 to EUR 5.20, in order to meet union demands, albeit below six and ten euro proposals that FESAP and STE had respectively put on the negotiating table.
In addition to pay assessments, the review of the Integrated System of Management and Performance Assessment in Public Administration (SIADAP), which promotes career advancement in the state, was instrumental in gaining approval from UGT’s two union federations. On the one hand, the points that were left and that would be lost due to the rise in career levels start to count. On the other hand, from January 2023, the rule of annuality of assessment cycles will be restored, according to the multi-year agreement. In other words, the perfomance performance review reverts to the old model: it takes place once a year instead of every two years as it is now.
The government has also committed to begin in January 2023 the timetable for the revision of revised and unrevised special careers, which are compressed by the civil service pay base, which will increase by EUR 56.58 next year from 705 euros ., current minimum wage, up to 761.58 euros. In the field of special careers, there are occupations such as doctors, nurses, teachers, INEM workers, the military, such as the GNR, or the security force, such as the PSP.
The Common Front, which influences the CGTP, was the only union structure left out of the agreement. Confronted by DN / Dinheiro Vivo with this situation, the secretary general of this organization, Sebastião Santana, was surprised by the agreement and revealed that “the government has not submitted any amendment proposals to the Common Front, such as the increase for senior technicians or the revision of SIADAP”. And he added: “The government negotiated in secret, excluded the Common Front from the negotiation process, while we always kept the doors of dialogue open. It is unacceptable!”
After taking note through the media of the understanding between the executive branch and the unions of the UGT, Sebastio Santana stressed that the “agreement will impoverish the vast majority of state workers, including senior technicians”.
In fact, of the universe of 741,698 state workers, only one in three (33.43%), i.e. about 248,000 of the lowest salary positions, including the 84,000 technical assistants who move up one level in the pay scale, will be entitled to raises above the inflation this year, between about 10.7% and 7.4%.
As for senior technicians who will receive €104.22 in January, the salary increase represents 7.3% for those in the third position and decreases to 3% for those in the fourteenth tier, when the government estimates that the price index, without housing , will reach 7.4% this year.
Source: DN
