The Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration is finalizing the drafting of a royal decree-law that will allow the activation of partial retirement for thousands of public employees with the category of labor personnel. The retirement of this group is paralyzed by the inability of employing administrations to hire replacement workers to substitute them, as required by a legal change that came into force in April 2025. Since that date, administrations have kept the early retirements of this group, made up of some 700,000 public sector workers, half of whom are employees of city councils and universities, on hold.
The imminent approval of this royal decree was one of the issues addressed this Monday at the social dialogue table meeting on pensions and the management of sick leave, which the Government maintains with social agents. This table was paused two months ago due to the unions’ refusal to proceed with the negotiation of improvements in the management of temporary disability (IT) sick leave until two issues were resolved: the aforementioned paralysis of partial retirements for labor personnel in administrations; and the interpretation of the reducing coefficients for early retirees with high regulatory bases.
This last matter has already been resolved with an instruction from the National Social Security Institute, which mandates the correct interpretation to determine the amount of these pensions, as well as the ex officio review since last January of all recognized benefits of this type. The reactivation of partial retirements for labor personnel will be resolved with the decree that Social Security is finalizing and which, in theory, will include the content of a preliminary agreement reached by representatives of the CC OO and UGT unions with the Ministries of Social Security and Public Function. This agreement includes two formulas for these retirements to be carried out in compliance with the law that requires replacement workers to have a permanent full-time contract. These avenues will consist of hiring workers either from an already completed selection process, or hiring interim workers whose position will be linked to the corresponding public employment offer.
In principle, the royal decree-law will only include this modification in the hiring of replacement workers for the partial retirements of public administration labor personnel, which is the only group that has this type of retirement approved and regulated, allowing the retirement age to be brought forward by two to three years in exchange for a proportional reduction in working hours and salary, with the remaining hours being covered by a replacement worker hired for that purpose. However, the confederal secretary of Public Policies and Social Protection of Comisiones Obreras, Carlos Bravo, has indicated that the unions have also asked the Executive to include in that decree the recognition of partial retirement for the rest of public employees (career and interim civil servants and statutory personnel), something that the Government also agreed with CC OO and UGT and is currently in an amendment to the Public Function Law, whose processing is stalled in Parliament.
Measures that are not controversial
However, Bravo has insisted that said decree should only include “non-controversial measures that gather the consensus not only of all social agents but also of a clear parliamentary majority” to ensure that it will be consolidated in the Congress of Deputies, in the month following its publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE). In this scenario, sources attending the meeting have indicated that the Government would be interested in including some measures on improvements in the management of sick leave (which are also being negotiated at this table) but the unions emphasize that the norm should only include issues whose parliamentary approval is assured.
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Among these other measures that this table will address and that could be more easily endorsed by sufficient consensus are, for example, the recognition of widow’s pensions in relationships not registered as common-law partners, but that have children and verifiable cohabitation; or the recognition of early retirement coefficients without cuts for airline cabin crew (TCP) in the air sector, according to Cristina Estévez, head of Social Security and Employment policies at UGT. “The rest of the more controversial measures can continue to be debated at this table,” insist sources from CC OO.
Precisely, at Monday’s meeting, the unions presented their proposal to the Government to improve IT management, highlighting two proposals that will not be easy to agree on. The first consists of modifying the law so that mutual societies collaborating with Social Security are fully public, including their management. Secondly, they propose that mutual societies be obliged to treat musculoskeletal diseases that workers consider they have acquired due to the characteristics of their job until their cure. And only once the worker has recovered, if the mutual society considers that the illness was not linked to their activity, should it claim the amount of that process from public health.
Now, Social Security officials have committed, according to Estévez, to deliver a new proposal on the management of temporary disabilities to social agents, taking into account the contributions of those attending this social dialogue table. For their part, employers are not optimistic about the progress of this negotiation, in which they saw no progress on Monday, according to employer sources consulted.
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