The high price of housing in the Balearic Islands has caused no official to choose the archipelago as a destination. Those who are forced, because they have no choice, leave as soon as they can. Those who resist do so with significant work overloads and diminished attention to the citizen. While the population has gone from one million people to 1,200,000 in recent years, public employee positions have not increased. According to the UGT, between 800 and 1,000 permanent workers are needed on the islands to avoid “the collapse of the Administration”. The Ministry of Finance and Public Function influences the continuous increase of places in public employment offers on the islands, but the situation has reached its limit.
The problems experienced by state officials in the Balearic Islands, and therefore its population, can be summarized in two main issues: the high price of housing and the high cost of living in the archipelago make it difficult for anyone to love themselves settle on the island. “Most of us are in the C2 group of the General State Administration (AGE), where about 1,200 euros are charged per month. The people who come here agree with other colleagues to share a flat for two years and, when they can, they leave,” emphasizes Fernando Martorell, secretary of the AGE sector in the Balearic Islands for UGT and one of the spokespersons for Insularidad Digna, the inter-union group created in response to this problem that brings together 21 organizations in defense of workers.
According to the data provided by the trade unionist, the workforce on the islands is 20% below the national average, to which is added a very high staff turnover.. “The collapse is already beginning to be noticed, and it will increase,” warns Martorell. Without going any further, the Traffic office in Ibiza is only open to the public two days a week, when it should be from Monday to Friday. “Of 21 vacancies, there are only seven occupied, but the fact is that of the 11 public service operators that there should be, there is only one, and of the seven people who continue, three are examiners, so any procedure takes forever,” Add.
David Pola, general secretary of the Spanish Police Confederation and spokesman for Insularidad Digna, states that a management such as retirement, which in other regions of the country can take days, even hours, in the Balearic Islands can be delayed for months.
The sectors most affected by this pressing lack of personnel are Social Security, SEPE, Traffic, National Police and Immigration. In the latter, the unoccupied places are around 40%, as added by the UGT. In the case of Social Security, one in five positions is unoccupied, a figure that has doubled in some periods. “And what do they do? Fill it, when they can, with temporary people. that's a patch. They do programs of nine, 10 months or a year, and then they leave”, says Martorell.
Given this point, the Ministry of Finance and Public Function maintains that there has been a “continuous increase in positions in public employment offers, with replacement rates that allow growth with net balances and guarantee a sufficient number of new recruits to be able to distribute to the whole territory”. In addition, they admit that the allocation of places is being prioritized, both in the territory and in those departments that offer direct services to citizens, guaranteeing an adequate distribution to all provinces..
Living in the Balearic Islands, hell
This particular case slows down even more any normal operation of the Administration in the Balearic Islands, for various reasons.. If temporary workers arrive, they will leave and will not take root in the territory, and if people arrive with their position, on the islands they will be taught to function for the first time in the workplace and then, inevitably, they will also leave..
Pola is blunt: “State officials cannot provide the service that we should to the Balearic citizens”. He also locates the genesis of the situation in the high cost of living and housing. In his own words, “living here is hell, most of us earn about 1,300 euros a month and with that it is impossible to make ends meet”.
The seriousness of the situation also depends on each island, Ibiza being the most affected. “In Ibiza, it is impossible to find a home, especially now in the summer period. The owners have seen that the business is for tourist rental and they make winter contracts so that people leave in the summer and come back when it is over”, develops Martorell. The collapse to which the trade unionist refers has left such disturbing images as seeing civil guards sleeping inside vans, according to what was explained by the spokesman.
Figures frozen for a quarter of a century
On the other hand, the high cost of housing in the Balearic archipelago should not be such a big problem when it comes to new civil servants taking root in the region due to the so-called “compensation for residence”. In other words, on their payroll, officials receive an extra to appease said problem.. Complete Pola: “We charge about 70 euros for this concept, which has not been updated for 25 years”.
This compensation also exists for those public workers assigned to the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, although the Balearic Islands would be the region that bears the worst part. “We have asked politicians to carry out a rigorous study of the situation, because this concept was added to the lists in 1965 and we do not know under what criteria,” adds Martorell..
In this sense, the secretary of the AGE sector on the islands also denounces a comparative grievance: “They tell us that Ceuta and Melilla are outside the Peninsula, and perhaps in the sixties that complement made sense for security reasons, but now not anymore. And they tell us about the Canary Islands that it is an outermost territory, which is true, but it also has more beneficial taxation”. Their claim, therefore, focuses on an analysis that reflects the objective criteria that they think compensation for residence should have, such as the price of the home, the price of the shopping cart or the tax regime that exists in the region.
Strike after the summer?
Pola, for her part, warns that the situation is not improving. “The first week of July, 56 new police officers arrive in Palma, and they are desperately looking for a home in which to start their professional career, and most of them would have preferred another destination,” he explains.. The offer is not very encouraging: the cheapest apartment is at 1,300 euros a month, from there up, when the floor of these policemen is around 2,000 euros.
“It is disappointing to work for the State, to end up risking our lives, and then see ourselves doomed to these hardships, when we want to provide a public service in defense of the rights and freedoms of citizens,” adds the representative of the National Police in Insularity worthy.
The situation is so close to collapse, as Martorell himself repeats, that they are waiting for the general elections to go further in their mobilizations. In addition, the Ministry of Finance and Public Function has always given them silence in response, as confirmed by the two spokespersons.. “Sooner or later, if they do nothing, there will be no choice but to go on strike, and the issue of strikes is already on the table,” continues Martorell..
From Insularidad Digna, they have not stopped internationalizing the problem. This is proven by their trip to the European Parliament, where they exposed the situation in which they live. “We are very satisfied, because the petition was left open and they said that they would ask the Government of Spain for explanations of what funds destined for territorial cohesion that Europe sends for this type of issue are spent on,” concludes Martorell..