The proposals regarding remuneration and labor relations in the public sector would be as follows:
- To equalize public salaries to private salaries, since it does not make sense for the public administration to be a huge island out of context in the labor market. If the majority of salaries are currently excessively low, it is necessary to fight publicly and politically to increase them and not generate two types of labor markets that are so asymmetrical. Maintaining excessive asymmetries between the public and private spheres can only have the end result of making the public sector itself unsustainable both institutionally and economically. This, in particular, implies that in certain positions at the most strategic, intelligence and high-tech levels, public salaries should be higher than they are at present. This measure is essential if we wish to achieve intelligent public institutions and to retain and attract talent. Therefore, we must put an end to the imposition of relatively low public salaries for everyone, as this would mean the institutional death of the public administration. It is not a question of paying at the same level as the market, since it is necessary to know how to exploit the value of working in a public environment where the work will always be much more stable and sheltered from the inclemencies than in the private labor market. We must also weigh up the values: working in the public system has, for certain professional and personal profiles, the value of contributing to the common good and the general interest. In short, to contribute to achieving a more equitable and fairer society. In practice, therefore, it would be a matter of remunerating our most qualified personnel a little better without having to align ourselves with certain crazy inflationary logics in which private employment tends to slide for its most relevant positions. It is much less pleasant to have to propose that public administration jobs that provide less added value should have conditions similar to those in the private sector (they can always be paid a little better, but it is suicidal to act totally outside the predominant system of private labor relations). It is necessary to tend, therefore, to the equalization of most of the operative positions, of trades, administrative and auxiliary positions to the private remuneration tables. Moreover, in many cases, the most sensible measure may be to outsource these types of jobs to the private sector.
- Another question to be analyzed is whether the Administration should implement employment policies as a mere employer without seeking other added value. There are public administrations, especially some municipalities, that create artificial employment in order to generate more jobs (instead of calling for one senior graduate position, they call for two administrative positions at the same cost). This is irrational and implies making the capacity and role of the public administration more precarious. Public institutions should have robust employability policies, of socially acceptable regulation of the private labor market, but never use their own organizations for this purpose. Similarly, it would be nonsense for public administrations to deliberately delay the implementation of robotics and lag far behind private organizations. The institutional and organizational needs of the public administration at any given time are one thing, but its employment policies or redistributive policies are quite another.
- Eliminate the labor privileges of public employees linked to the enjoyment of more vacation days or reduced working hours. The argument of the previous point is equally valid in this second proposal. It is a very bad strategy to freeze the remuneration policy and open to negotiation some items related to working conditions. It is a classic argument that, since public employees are losing purchasing power and it is considered politically and socially impossible to improve their remuneration tables, it is decided to negotiate through the back door for increasing working conditions, some of which are unfair and incomprehensible. This is a textbook mistake in which politicians and unions have fallen into over the last few decades, with the gregarious contribution of human resources management specialists. Let’s use three arguments to explain this mistake: a) fewer working hours usually have a greater economic impact than salary improvements. This is an imposture since these costs are socially hidden but represent an enormous economic burden; b) the good social image of public employees must be protected and the fact that they have more real vacation days than private employees, that they have much more advantageous working hours, much friendlier personal and family reconciliation policies, etc. contribute to reinforce the very bad and unfair social image of public employees as privileged beings with a certain natural tendency towards idleness. There is no worse measure than to feed with enthusiasm the perverse social clichés, and c) this type of measures are impregnating the administrative culture and, in the end, this one ends up assimilating some parameters that stimulate in excess the recreational culture opposite to the culture of the work. It is impossible to avoid this and most public employees, even against their professional and personal convictions, end up engineering their own hours and days off to make them even more valuable. This phenomenon is human and not to be criticized, but malignant in the face of a powerful and positive administrative culture. Moreover, the work time and intellectual energy lost due to this type of accounting engineering on working or non-working hours is not anecdotal.
- Eliminate all the rigidities in the civil service that hinder good management and make it impossible in practice to achieve a fluid labor discipline. Public employees should be required to have the same discipline and level of performance as private employees. Only public employees in positions of authority and those in contact with the political dimension of public administration should be shielded in those aspects related to avoiding discretionality, arbitrariness, clientelism and corruption of a political nature. While it is true that a meritocratic and competitive system of access to the public administration should be rewarded, it is necessary to avoid rewards that directly undermine the effectiveness and efficiency of the public system. After all, there is a type of compensation of enormous labor value in the public system: the guarantee, with rare exceptions, that a professional who meritocratically enters the public system will be guaranteed his or her job for life if he or she compensates for it with a reasonable performance. In the current and future labor market, which is characterized by its extremely high volatility, this almost total guarantee of a lifetime employment has a very high attractiveness and market value that must be weighed and used as a bargaining chip.
- Trade union rules or strategies in relation to the public administration must be modified. Although it is a politically incorrect proposal, it is clear that the legislation in this area cannot be the same as in the private sector (Ramió, 2017). As has been highlighted, the public administration is very vulnerable to corporate and union pressure, and it must be protected. There is no sense in a legislative framework in which public employees who are reasonably paid, with very decent working conditions and with a life-long linkage are protected through labor and union channels. The legislation must protect the weakest part, which is the public administration, which is also paid for by all citizens, is at their service and defends the common good and the general interest. The proposal would consist of limiting the lobbying capacity of trade unions by drastically restricting trade union activity in the public administration. In the event that a country achieves the prodigy of changing the union culture (with high values and public responsibility) in public administrations, then it would not be necessary to take such drastic measures. Basically, what these measures propose is to reach a new pact between public employees and the public administration to defend and protect the viability and sustainability of the public system and to abandon the selfish, individualistic and unsupportive logics associated with corporate and trade union captures.