The labor conflict of education

For me, the agreement between the Government, UGT and CCOO was a solvent solution to the labor conflict in the educational sector. A good balance between, on the one hand, the reality of the Generalitat's income and, on the other, two factors that put pressure on spending: the need to improve students' educational results and the need to update teachers' salaries. Unfortunately, the majority union is not participating in the agreement, and has launched a strike and taken to the streets. Negotiations have reopened. We will see how it ends, but it doesn't look good. The Generalitat has many sectors to attend to and will not be able to resolve the situation by allocating many more resources to education than had been foreseen in the agreement. If salaries are increased beyond what was foreseen, it will be, whether we like it or not, at the expense of quality provisions. By the way, I cannot fail to mention an aspect of the conflict that disturbs me: the threat, minority but not sufficiently disavowed, of leaving students without school camps. It is irresponsible, and I must say that I have not seen anything similar in the parallel conflict that has occurred in the health sector.

To understand what drives personnel hiring in the education sector, it is advisable to consider it from the more general perspective of public sector hiring.

On the supply side of jobs in the sector, we have a triple typology of contracts: temporary ones – including interim positions –, permanent employment contracts (stable occupation), and civil servant positions, which are distinguished from permanent employment contracts by the fact that they entail an absolute guarantee of employment. It is super stable. Europe has questioned the levels of interim employment in Spain, and this is leading to a limitation of its use. On the demand side, there are three aspects that, to a greater or lesser extent, make a specific job desirable: vocational fit (that it aligns with training, aptitudes, and interests), contractual stability, and salary (more generally: working conditions). Perhaps we should consider that the less fit and stability there is, the higher the salary should be to induce acceptance of the corresponding employment contract. Given that in practice the trend is to value the super-stability of the civil servant contract far above the permanent employment contract (which, in this context, often receives the qualification of "precarious"), it would be natural for us to observe that, for the same work, the civil servant salary would be below the permanent employment contract salary. At very high qualification levels, this is what we see. A State Attorney has lower income in the public sector than in the private sector. In this case, however, the reason will not be so much the preference for super-stability as the vocation for public service. However, at intermediate levels of administration, we can easily see the opposite: in the private sector, a high school teacher would typically earn not more, but less.  

An explanation for the paradox could be found in what economists call time inconsistency. It may be that a worker who wants to access the public sector is willing to accept an offer that gives them super-stability for a relatively low salary. But the economic calculation is inverted once they have acquired this status: their negotiating position has improved enormously. The decision on salary, which was previously the right one, is no longer so once they are established in super-stability.

With all this, for many jobs, public employment will be unbeatable: more stability and more salary, contrary to what is expected. The consequence is that it is so attractive and that an expansive dynamic is generated in public employment. If a temporary shock, such as a pandemic, demands the hiring of new workers, the most logical thing is to hire them through temporary channels or by commissioning private companies. But the interested discrediting of temporary contracts or subcontracting – always qualified as precarious –, combined with the attractiveness of public contracts, means that, however evident it may be that the task being carried out is temporary, the pressure is irresistible and the net result ends up being a disordered and unplanned increase in permanent public employment.  

It is an expansive trend that is not sustainable. For me, the way to curb it would be to make indefinite labor contracts, much more flexible than civil servant contracts, a more central reference for public hiring. But I suppose that what is most likely will be a big push for robotization (more effective for train drivers than for teachers, though).