The Ministry of Labor received a delegation from the Confederation of Organizations of State Officials (COFE) to defend the new medical leave scheme for the Public employees in Uruguay and they proposed the extension of its implementation, while the government agreed to analyze the proposal.
The union opposes the new regime since they understand that it will cause a salary reduction because from the ninth day of illness the subsidy would be reduced by up to 75%. With this, the objective of the meeting was to analyze the new system in conjunction with the government, since this would be implemented starting next Thursday, February 1.
In this sense, the secretary general of COFE, Joselo López, He assured Underrayado that the meeting allowed “to analyze whether the implementation of this new regime can be postponed and at the same time install a negotiation table.” negotiation with the officials.”
Meanwhile, López recalled that this project has been defined for three years with the budget law. “Later there were modifications with the accountability reports and it was not implemented. Then we found out that it began to be applied since February, without prior negotiation,” he explained and assured that, if the implementation of the system continued, a conflict would arise.
In addition to the licensing regime, COFFEE points out that the adjustment decreed by the government for 2024 is less than the agreed upon, given the announcement of a 5.4% increase that they will charge in February, when the expected percentage was 6.3%. The official argument is that the change is due to a modification in the inflation projection for this year made by the Macroeconomic Coordination Committee; while the union denounces a reduction.
The government’s perspective
The head of the MTSS, Pablo Mieres, He explained that the objective of the meeting with the COFE delegation was to “clarify” the positions of the parties and “bring closer positions.” According to what he told El País, the government would try to “lower the ball” to prevent the conflict from continuing to escalate.
Regarding salaries, Mieres maintained that “there is a component that they have not managed, but that is real, and that is that last year, when the salary was increased on January 1, 2023, it was increased by a inflation expectation which was 1.5% higher, and they don’t say that. For this reason, public officials recovered the purchasing power last year,” highlighted the Minister of Labor, who added that “it is not that purchasing power is going to fall.”
In addition, he highlighted that “the public’s salary is above 2019, already since last year,” and added that “those things deserve an explanation and perhaps the mistake was not having spoken before.”
Source: Ambito
