The emails announcing the immediate terminations effective this Monday, August 31, spread like wildfire 10 days ago among public employees from all ministries. They were received by hundreds of interim officials temporarily hired by the General State Administration to help manage the funds of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (known by its acronym PRTR). The layoffs, between about 300 and a thousand, depending on the source consulted, occur after a consultation by the Directorate General of Public Function to the State Attorney’s Office regarding the fate of these workers hired specifically for these programs, since the execution of the European funds legally ends this Monday.
The response from the State lawyers arrived on August 20: the execution period of the funds ends on August 31 and, therefore, the interim officials hired to help spend this money should cease on that same date, according to sources from Public Function familiar with the content of the legal report. However, the same sources specify, “not all will cease: those who have to continue to carry out monitoring tasks, audits, as long as their continuity is duly justified, may see their stay extended until December 31 at the latest.”
The general criterion to terminate most of these public employees was communicated on August 21, one day after the State Attorney’s Office’s statement, to all human resources managers of all ministries and other bodies dependent on the General State Administration. These, in turn, sent informative emails to those affected with the mandate of the Directorate General of Public Function, informing of the terminations with barely ten days’ notice, according to several affected and union representatives of the AGE.
The layoffs caught those affected by surprise, with unions estimating around a thousand while consulted Administration sources lower the figure to about 300 people. Many were hired after the first addendum to the Recovery Plan was made in October 2023. “Most of us had an appointment period, which appears in various documents, until October 2027, a term that is being breached,” complains an interim who will be terminated and prefers not to be identified. Another official from the Ministry of Labor, who also speaks anonymously, assures that the contracts were for three years — the general maximum term to occupy a program as an interim, except for justified exceptions — with possibilities of extension for one more year.
Those extensions were expected by many of these hires to perform control, monitoring, and audit tasks of the European funds of the plan. Because, once the execution period ends this August 31, a five-year period opens for States to audit the expenses. And, in any case, maintain their control and data preservation obligations, in case they have to be accountable to Brussels.
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“Many paradoxical situations will arise in which officials will have to monitor and control the payments made without any of those of us who managed them still being here,” says the interim from the Ministry of Labor who asks to keep his identity confidential. “On my work computer, which I have to return this Monday — he continues — is everything authorized over the years, but I will not be able to guide them to find the documentation they need.”
One of the agencies where most affected are known to date is the Public Employment Service (SEPE), where more than a hundred interim officials will be terminated. “The layoffs will occur regardless of when they were hired and many will have to leave many tasks open and unfinished, and someone will have to do that work,” explains David Fernández, SEPE state coordinator in the UGT union. Moreover, he assures that the hires were not only dedicated to managing the execution of the funds but also performed control and verification tasks. That is, they checked on the ground that the money was being used for what had been established.
The way the terminations have been communicated is also the subject of numerous complaints from union representatives. From the UGT union section in the Ministry of Transport, they denounce that the decision “should have been communicated and dealt with previously with the legal representation of the workers, to guarantee the necessary information and agree, if applicable, on the measures and communication mechanisms directed at the affected personnel.” On the contrary, “neither the staff board nor the works council have received prior information about this decision, nor have negotiation bodies been convened to address its effects,” they add.
The CSIF representatives in the same ministry also warn about the manner, which they consider inappropriate, in which the layoff process is being carried out. After consulting the Transport staff representatives, the public function union assures that the emails received by those affected, in their case on Monday, August 24, were “only informative,” something that could have been replicated in other ministries. Therefore, they warn that “the termination as such is materialized with the registration document,” which must be sent to those affected. And they recommend keeping both the first informative email and the subsequent registration document to “explore the possibilities of action in each case.”
Both the interim officials who cease this Monday and their union representatives wonder how these layoffs will affect the future position of the dismissed in the employment pools. There is a 2014 resolution that established that if the employee has been hired for more than six months, when terminated they automatically drop to the bottom of that list, making future hires more difficult.
