This Monday, the Ministries of Public Service and Finance were unable to convince the three most representative unions in the public sector (CC OO, UGT and CSIF) to collectively support its proposal to increase the salaries of 3.5 million public employees by 11% between 2025 and 2028 (both years inclusive), so they decided to continue negotiating on Wednesday. The main obstacle is that the government will remain firm on one condition: public salaries will only be able to increase by a maximum of 4% accumulated in 2025 and 2026, as confirmed by the Secretary General of the General Region CC OO, Lucio Palazzo.
In this way, to ensure purchasing power in the current year, the salaries of these workers should be raised retroactively by 2.5% (approximately the average increase in inflation during the year), which will limit the increase for 2026 to only 1.5%. This will almost certainly result in a loss of purchasing power next year, which has prevented unions from supporting the multi-year agreement. According to the General Services Secretary of the General Union of Workers, Isabelle Araki, the unions proposed moving half a point of the 7% increase that would correspond to 2027 and 2028 to 2026, but executive negotiators rejected this. Although, on the positive side, Arac highlighted that the public service had accepted that no part of the salary increase would be linked to compliance with variable conditions such as the CPI or GDP, so the 11% increase after four years would be fully guaranteed.
For its part, the civil servants’ union CSIF insisted that negotiations should be extended beyond Monday, and believes that “there is room for improvement” so it “aspires to the best possible agreement.” This center ensures improvements in the text regarding permits, internal promotion, improved Muface assistance, recruitment or professional classification, as well as a commitment to the complete abolition of replacement fees. CSIF will consult with its governing bodies on its position on this agreement.
Negotiating sources indicated that the government’s intention was to obtain the centers’ approval for this salary offer to be approved on Tuesday in the Council of Ministers and to be able to pay the 2025 increase retroactively as of January 1 in the December salary scales. But the unions categorically refuse to set the 4% rate in 2025 and 2026, and believe that there is room to continue negotiating and reaching an agreement that will be approved in the subsequent Council of Ministers. But government pressure was so great that government officials went so far as to urge union representatives, if necessary, to consult overnight with their governing bodies to provide a response before Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.
The alternative put forward by the executive branch, as discussed at Monday’s meeting, was not to raise public salaries at all (not even in 2025 retroactively) and to rely on future salary increases for state budgets that have very little chance of being passed. In this case, unions have already warned that, in the absence of salary improvements, they will call a general strike across the public sector in December.
Late last Friday afternoon, there was optimism among some government and union negotiators to reach a new wage and employment agreement. But this optimism was not easily translated into agreement. The Ministry of Public Service had already given an ultimatum to the CC OO, UGT and CSIF on Thursday last week: the salary increase between 2025 and 2028 will be 11% cumulative and they have called on the centers to state their position on Monday. The response of the union majority was negative regarding the distribution of increases throughout the four years of the agreement, and they hope to continue negotiating to amend this issue.