NATIONAL SPAIN/ Public employment in education recovers the level prior to cuts

After years of cuts, the templates of public administrations have been growing for two years, although they are still far from the levels reached before the crisis and will take time to recover. In fact, all Administrations and almost all sectors have fewer workers than before the financial crisis. Only education has already recovered the volume of employees that it had then. According to the registry of personnel of the Ministry of Public Function, with data as of January 1, 555,951 public employees work in non-university teaching, almost 5,700 more than five years ago.

Public education is a sector affected by job instability and has seasonal ups and downs. Mass dismissals and hiring at the beginning and end of the summer prove it. But the sector has been gaining staff in recent years about this temporality. The bulk of these templates is managed by the autonomous communities, which have attributed educational competences. Many of these administrations began, in the wake of the recovery, to re-establish their staff of professors. This is not the case in other sectors such as health, justice or state, regional or local management services, where the workforce continues to be very depleted.

«Many of the administrative jobs will not recover. There are trades like usher or ordinance that no longer make sense. In addition, with the computerization of the Administration each time less administrative assistants will be needed «, explains a former senior finance official who knows perfectly the ins and outs of the public staff. Now what is needed, he points out, are A1 and A2 group officials, highly trained university students.

Non-university public education recovered at the beginning of this year the level lost in 2012. Then, the Government of Rajoy approved the decrees of cuts that eliminated more than 30,000 professors and workers linked to the public education sector. Why education has recovered before? From UGT, CSI-F and CC OO note that in their negotiations with the autonomies have tried to reverse those cuts, which increased teacher ratios per student and teaching hours per teacher. Those responsible for the education sector of the unions explain that Andalusia, Catalonia or Extremadura, among others, reached pacts to legally circumvent the restrictions imposed in 2012. However, CC OO believes that the ministry computes the staff of ministries and colleges and that , according to their numbers, the number of teachers and professors would not have reached the level prior to the cuts.

When expanding the focus of the staff of the set of Administrations, it can be seen that the public staff are still 5.3% below the maximum reached in 2010, when there were 2,696,028 people working for all administrations, including officials, interns , labor and eventual personnel. This year there are still 142,523 fewer. To close that difference will contribute the last offer of public employment. The government approved last week a call for about 31,000 places for the General State Administration, the first that contemplates a net increase in employment in this administration. However, Raúl Olmos (CC OO) and Francisco Iglesias (CSI-F) believe that this increase in jobs will not begin to be reflected until at least the first semester of 2019, since since the Government approves a public employment offer until the official joins his place, he spends a period between official announcements, tests, resources and taking of possession, of almost two years.

«There is a false idea that in Spain there are many officials,» explains Francisco Velasco, professor of administrative law at the Autonomous University. «If there is not a strong public sector, there can not be a strong private sector,» he reasons.

The town councils are one of the administrations where public staff have been reduced the most. «It’s due to the financial equilibrium plans they suffered during the crisis,» explains Velasco. Although this year they have recovered a good number of troops, their staff is still far from those reached in 2010 when it hired 657,905 people. Coincidentally, municipal troops grow the year before the local elections.

EXTREMADURA, WITH MORE WEIGHT OF OFFICIALS
An examination of the numbers of the members of the autonomous communities, published by the Secretary of State for Public Services this week, shows that Extremadura, Navarra and Asturias are the territories with the most public employees per capita. «It’s not necessarily bad,» says Francisco Velasco, a professor at the Autonomous University. Administrations that do not have a strong private sector need a strong public sector that pulls the economy, he adds. Therefore, autonomies such as Extremadura or Asturias have powerful companies for public business promotion. At the opposite extreme are