The internal war over the status of professional categories within the civil service is about to open a new chapter. The Congress of Deputies approved this week the examination of a bill initiated by the Parliament of Cantabria aimed at modifying the Fundamental Statute of the Civil Service. The objective is to update the professional classification of career civil servants and unify into a single group all bodies and grades of civil servants who enter with a university degree, thus eliminating the current division between subgroups A1 and A2.
This change, a priori, would allow professionals such as Treasury technicians, labor sub-inspectors, nurses or physiotherapists, among other A2s who already have comparable university training, to access the A1 subgroup.
The proposal passed the first parliamentary procedure with 155 votes for, 33 against and 156 abstentions. From now on, the modification period will be open, first to the entirety; and if the text is not rejected, groups can present partial amendments. These amendments will be debated within the corresponding Commission, which will issue an opinion which will be presented in plenary session for approval to the Lower House.
However, even the unions and associations of civil servants did not know that this bill was going to be dealt with. In addition, Administration sources emphasize that this is a review of a legislative initiative and, therefore, the final results of the text are currently unpredictable, both in terms of content and timing.
The bill includes a single article which reforms article 76 of the Organic Statute of the civil service to establish a single group A, without subgroups, which specifies that “to access the bodies or scales of this group, it will be necessary to be in possession of a baccalaureate or equivalent”. Likewise, it specifies generically that “the classification of organizations and scales will depend on the level of responsibility of the functions to be performed and the characteristics of the access tests”. Although diplomas lasting 6 years (360 credits) are recognized as a plus within Group A, as is the case for doctors.
The origin of the bill, as recognized by its authors and specified in the explanatory memorandum, is a professional classification conflict which particularly affects nursing and physiotherapist professionals in the public service and the statutory public sector. More precisely, they describe the current classification of group A into two subgroups (A1 and A2) as “obsolete” and denounce that “it is neither coherent nor respects the new structure of university degrees of the Bologna Plan”.
They mean that the current classification maintains the old division between graduates and university graduates, despite the fact that the Bologna Plan homogenized all university degrees into what is called the University Diploma. Thus, the specific criticism included in this proposal is that nursing and physical therapy professionals (who must have 240 university credits) are classified in the A2 subgroup, which prevents them from accessing, for example, health management and management positions or research and teaching groups. While other professionals such as economists and lawyers, also with 240 credits, belong to the A1 subgroup and reach the aforementioned management positions.
The president of the National Health sector of the Civil Servants Union CSIF, Fernando Hontangas, shares this explanation and also denounces other violations of article 76, which also affect senior technicians who are classified in subgroup C1, when they should be in subgroup B, or intermediate technicians (nursing assistants) who are C2, when they should be C1.
Other sectors
However, the proposed reform of Article 76 made by the legislative initiative would affect not only the health sector, but also many other activities of administrations. Thus, sources from the Association of State Treasury Inspectors believe that the proposal, as it is written, “can lay the foundations for a completely crazy reclassification of other public service organizations integrated into the A2 subgroup that have aspired for years to become bodies of the A1 subgroup (higher bodies), without going through the opposition phase and without approving the selection process established as a prerequisite for these higher bodies”.
It is for this reason that the Association of Treasury Inspectors is totally opposed to this legal modification, which it considers a “political shortcut which, under the pretext of correcting grievances, boosts the career of the civil service, makes access to higher groups less costly and creates a very dangerous precedent to convert technical bodies into superiors through the back door, without taking into account merit, capacity and excellence”.
Quite the opposite of the Union of Treasury Technicians (Gestha), classified in category A2, for whom the step taken by the Congress reopens the debate on the effective recognition of higher technical functions already exercised by numerous organizations classified in subgroup A2. “Recognizing senior functions to the organizations that exercise them and better organizing careers and mobility strengthen the Administration, improve its capacity to attract and retain talent and results in better service to citizens. »
The organization appreciates that Congress “opens the melon” of a question postponed for so many years and hopes that the treatment will result in a clear and updated framework that recognizes the professional reality of all civil servants and stimulates career and mobility throughout the Administration, recalling that specifically the technicians of the Ministry of Finance have been demanding for 25 years a better match that allows them to take advantage of their potential.
For its part, the UGT Public Services also considers that it is not necessary to modify article 76 which regulates the professional classification of career civil servants, but that the scales, categories and levels should be developed by the competent administrations. And it is a question that, moreover, is already included in the Monitoring Commission of the Framework Agreement for a 21st Century Administration which, according to this union, is the forum where it must be addressed.
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