The Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Administration has informed the trade unions that it has The formal procedure to implement the 35-hour work week has begun in the General State Administration (AGE). With this move, the Government is reactivating one of the key commitments included in the Framework Agreement for a 21st Century Administration signed with UGT and CCOO, and subsequently reiterated in the latest agreement reached with CSIF.
This reduction in working time, which will shorten the workday from the From 37,5 current hours to 35 hours per week (7 hours per day)This will apply to civil servants and other employees of the General State Administration and its public bodies. Estimates from the government and trade unions place the number of potential beneficiaries within a range of between 240.000 and 250.000 public employeeswhich gives an idea of the scope of the measure.
Start of the procedure and planned schedule
According to the Civil Service, the State Secretariat responsible for this area is preparing new instructions regarding working hours and schedules These instructions, intended for staff serving the General State Administration and its dependent bodies, will form the regulatory basis for reducing the weekly working hours to 35, replacing the current framework of 37,5 hours.
The Ministry's plan involves convening the days 10 and 11 February The proposal will be submitted to the Senior Personnel Commission and the Standing Committee, bodies that will inform undersecretaries and personnel managers from the various ministerial departments about the content of the amendment. This is an essential preliminary step before submitting the proposal to the General Board of the State Administration, where the detailed negotiation with the trade union organizations will be addressed.
The unions consulted indicate that, barring any unforeseen problems, the reduction in working hours could be implemented. Ready to be applied between the end of February and MarchHowever, both the Ministry itself and the unions acknowledge that the technical and organizational complexity of the measure may influence the timelines and require certain adjustments, especially when specifying which exact groups are included.
The UGT and CCOO unions point out that the 35-hour commitment was already included in the Framework Agreement for 21st Century Administration 2022-2024whose validity expired on December 31, 2024, without its implementation in the General State Administration having been completed. The new impetus now given by the Civil Service aims to unblock an issue that the unions have been describing as "pending" for years.
Meanwhile, the department he heads Oscar Lopez has moved to the power plants that They will meet the agreed deadlines. Previously, after earlier meetings had raised the possibility of linking the implementation of the 35-hour workweek to the approval of a new General State Budget, this scenario, which generated deep unease among labor unions, has been ruled out with the official announcement of the start of the procedure.
Who will be affected by the reduction in working hours?
According to the latest data from the Statistical Bulletin of Personnel Serving Public Administrations, the General State Administration has more than 240.000 public employees within its strictly administrative sphere, excluding the Armed Forces, State Security Forces and Corps, and the Administration of Justice. This figure rises to around 250.000 if all dependent bodies and entities are included.
Within the AGE are found the ministries, state secretariats, undersecretariats and general directoratesThis includes staff assigned to government delegations and sub-delegations in the provinces and island directorates. It also includes AGE staff abroad, such as those in embassies and permanent missions to international organizations.
The staff structure is distributed among different types of entities: around 95.000 employees are directly assigned to the ministriesMore than 63.000 belong to autonomous bodies, some 24.000 work in public business entities, and nearly 19.000 work in state agencies. In addition, several thousand people provide services in independent administrative authorities, non-transferred state-owned universities (such as the UNED or the UIMP), and other public law entities.
In theory, the General State Administration also encompasses agencies and entities attached to the ministries that operate with a certain degree of autonomy, such as the State Public Employment Service (SEPE), certain regulatory agencies, or public business entities. However, the unions point out that in these cases A specific negotiation will be necessary. at the General Negotiation Table to adapt the workday to the specific characteristics of each organization.
In principle, the expectation is that are excluded from this reduction in working hours Groups such as the Armed Forces, the State Security Forces and Corps, and the Administration of Justice, which have their own regulatory and organizational frameworks, are excluded. However, the unions have already indicated that they will advocate for extending labor improvements wherever possible, albeit through negotiation channels different from those used for the General State Administration.
Union position and additional demands
The three major public sector organizations, UGT, CCOO and CSIFThey have welcomed the Ministry's announcement as a step in the right direction, although they differ in the tone of their messages. UGT and CCOO emphasize that the decision represents a return to what was agreed upon in the previous Framework Agreement and that it clears up the uncertainty generated in recent weeks regarding a possible postponement linked to the General State Budget.
Both unions insist that the The implementation of the 35-hour work week must cover the entire General State Administration, which expressly includes the staff of Penitentiary InstitutionsThis group has often been left in an ambiguous position in previous organizational reforms, so the unions are demanding that this situation not be repeated this time.
For its part, the Independent Trade Union and Civil Servants' Confederation (CSIF) has also welcomed the start of the procedure, but stresses that the measure “It arrives more than three years late” Regarding the commitments made by the Government, the organization points out that the 35-hour workweek is already implemented in most regional and local administrations, meaning that the General State Administration (AGE) had remained one of the few large public structures without adapting its schedule to this standard.
CSIF emphasizes that the progress made during the day is only the first phase of a broader reform schedule included in the agreements signed with the Executive. Among the priorities that the union wants to address immediately at the General Negotiation Table are the effective development of teleworking in Administration, the Internal promotion of the staff, the update of compensation for reasons of service (diet allowances, travel and other expenses) and the strengthening of the healthcare system of muface for officials.
UGT and CCOO, in the same vein, demand that the issue be addressed urgently. professional classification of senior and mid-level technical staff in the area of public service, an issue that is also included in the Framework Agreement for a 21st Century Administration. The recent processing of draft of the Framework Health Statute This has become an additional argument for accelerating this review of professional categories and groups.
Partial retirement and teleworking, other open fronts
Beyond the 35-hour workweek, one of the issues generating the most friction between the government and unions is the recovery of early partial retirement for public sector employees. This right was left in a kind of limbo after the pension reform, which requires that replacement contracts associated with these retirements be permanent, something that is complicated in the public sector by the need to go through competitive examinations or public employment offers.
The Civil Service has informed the unions that will seek the appropriate regulatory instrument to guarantee the viability of this figure, but UGT and CCOO have demanded that the recovery be immediate and have appealed to both the Government and parliamentary groups to definitively resolve a problem that affects thousands of public employees in labor, civil service and statutory contexts.
Another commitment that has remained pending for years is the full development of teleworking in the General State Administration. Although an agreement to promote it was reached back in April 2021, unions denounce that its practical implementation has been very limited and uneven, and demand clearer and more uniform regulations that guarantee rights, adequate technological resources, and common criteria across departments.
The most recent agreements have also included the need to strengthen the Internal promotion, to adjust the amounts for reasons of service to the rising cost of living and to consolidate pay improvements. In this regard, the latest wage agreement includes a cumulative increase of around 11% over several years for all public employees, although the unions stress that these economic improvements must be accompanied by organizational changes such as a reduction in working hours.
The trade unions believe that the effective implementation of the 35-hour workweek can serve as thermometer of the Government's true will to fulfill the remaining signed commitments. Therefore, they have announced that they will continue to monitor the procedure very closely and do not rule out increasing pressure if they detect further delays or attempts to condition the implementation of the measure on political factors unrelated to the negotiations at the General Negotiation Table.
Context: other administrations already apply the 35-hour workweek
The General State Administration comes to this debate with a certain delay compared to other public administrationsNumerous autonomous communities and a good number of large municipalities have already implemented or recovered the 35-hour work week after the austerity policies that became widespread with the 2008 financial crisis.
At the municipal level, city councils such as those of Seville, Madrid, Santa Cruz de Tenerife or Cáceres They have been operating with 35-hour workweeks for their staff for some time. In the case of Barcelona, the city council recently closed a preliminary agreement in their collective bargaining agreement to reduce the working day from the current 37,5 hours to 35 hours per week, thus aligning with the standard demanded by the unions for the entire public sector.
The contrast with the AGE, which has maintained the workday until now 37,5 hours per weekThis has become increasingly evident over time. In fact, the first Framework Agreement for a 21st-century Administration already included, in general terms, the implementation or reinstatement of the 35-hour workweek in all administrations, making it clear that each level —state, regional or local— had to negotiate the details of its application.
The current situation is largely due to the final phase of negotiations between the government and the unions regarding the new wage and organizational framework. In this process, the unions have succeeded in getting the The 35-hour workweek should once again be at the center of the agenda, along with other commitments such as partial retirement, professional classification and the development of teleworking.
With the procedure already underway and an approximate timeline pointing to the coming months, the reduction of working hours in the General State Administration is shaping up to be... one of the major internal reforms of this legislature in the area of public employment. Its final scope will depend on how the negotiations at the General Table are resolved, on the technical capacity to adapt schedules and services and on the inclusion—or not—of groups such as Penitentiary Institutions and certain attached bodies, but everything indicates that the AGE is on the verge of aligning itself with the rest of the administrations that already operate with 35 hours per week.
