Attention, public employees: 2.6 billion pesos agreement signed to benefit public employees
The Ministry of Labor announced news that will benefit more than 1.3 million public employees in the country. The collective bargaining between 35 labor unions and the national government, after nearly three months of negotiations, reached agreements on issues such as the strengthening of the collective rights of workers, labor welfare, quality of life of public employees, and freedom of association, among others.
On March 28, the Public Sector Negotiating Table, composed of more than 1,200 negotiators from the national government and the unions, was installed with the presentation of 604 petitions and the agreement of 38% of the requests, for a total of 232 agreements.
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The Vice Minister of Labor Relations and Inspection, Edwin Palma Egea, who represented the national government at the negotiating table, expressed his satisfaction with the results of the work of the last few months:
“We are very satisfied with the signing of this agreement for close to 1.3 million workers of the State entities and which has cost 2.6 trillion pesos, which means income for the families of the State workers. An agreement that also implies labor welfare, that recognizes and strengthens collective rights, which is very important for this Government”.
In addition, Palma Egea described as “historic” the agreement reached by the government and unions last night, as can be seen on his Twitter account:
¡HISTÓRICO!
— Edwin Palma Egea (@PalmaEdwin) June 23, 2023
Después de 4 meses de negociaciones, acabamos de suscribir el acuerdo colectivo estatal con TODAS las organizaciones sindicales y en beneficio de más de 1.2 millones de trabajadores del Estado. Un ejemplo de #dialogosocial.
Un reconocimiento a todos los… pic.twitter.com/0MxwF9uglr
According to the Ministry of Labor, the collective bargaining agreement commits to 2.6 trillion pesos, an amount that will come out of the National General Budget. The ministerial portfolio also indicated that there will be increases in the judicial bonus, which for 2023 will be of the CPI of 2022 (13.12%) + 1.1% and for 2024 of the CPI with which this year closes + 1.2%.
This is how the agreement between public employees and the national government will be implemented
The collective agreement between the government and the unions seeks to improve the labor situation of public employees and their union rights. It also proposes to incorporate “the gender, intersectional and differential approach in the development of the plan for the formalization of public employment in equity, with meritocratic criteria and permanence vocation”, explained the MinTrabajo.
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This task will be left in the hands of the Administrative Department of the Civil Service, the entity responsible for carrying out the formalization of the country’s public employees.
Likewise, the Ministry of Labor explained that the implementation of the agreement will require making some regulatory modifications, such as to Decree 344 of 2021, related to union guarantees for public employees. It also requires the design of a law project to be processed in the second legislature of 2023 to modify Law 2094 of 2021, whose objective will be to “include discrimination, persecution, violence and any other anti-union conduct against union leaders and unionized personnel”, the ministerial portfolio details.
In this regard, the entity informed that it is expected that within a maximum period of three months from the signing of the agreement, a Technical Committee will be set up to carry out a technical study to analyze the following requests:
- Creation of a professional, advisory, technical, and assistance technical bonus,
- Increase in the bonus for services rendered and its inclusion as a settlement factor in the technical bonus,
- Increase in the seniority bonus,
- Recognition of overtime payment
- Increase in the recreation bonus, in national and territorial entities.
This roundtable will be made up of labor unions and the national government, represented by the Ministries of Labor, Finance and Public Credit, the Administrative Department of the Civil Service, and the National Planning Department.
In addition to the budget allocated, the agreement includes evaluating the possibility of increasing resources. For this purpose, another technical round table will be set up, headed by the Ministry of Transportation, and will be accompanied by the Ministry of Finance, the Labor Unions, and the Union Federations that signed the agreement.
The objective will be to evaluate the technical, legal, budgetary, and financial feasibility of allocating “an additional percentage of the collection resources from the RUNT 2.0 contract as a source of financing for the strengthening and expansion of the plant”, according to the Ministry of Labor.
Finally, the national government and trade union organizations will be responsible for studying the possibility of reducing the working hours of public employees, an analysis that should include economic and legal aspects in its conclusions.
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