After salaries were slashed by 5% in 2010, frozen in 2011 and again in 2013, government?s net expenditure son payroll have only dropped by 2.1%. This marginal reduction can be attributed in part to the fact that even though salaries have been reduced, the number of government jobs was still increasing through 2012. Since then payroll costs have fallen by 2.5 million euros.
So why are federal payroll expenditures not dropping if labor reforms have cut both jobs and salaries? Some civil servants retired early, and even though they are not active employees they are still receiving pensions from the government. The biggest cutbacks were made to the temporary labor force, particularly in the town and regional government administrations. On the contrary, the national government has increased the number of its temporary jobs. These positions were up 9.5% in May, while they were down 14.5% in May of last year.
The government has spent practically everything it saved on labor cuts last year and also increased top positions by 0.5% while civil servant positions were only cut by 2%.
Numbers like this make it hard to believe that we've carried out any reforms of the public sector, which is prone to providing favors to workers. The national government should provide model behavior. If Monotro cannot control spending on government staffing, then he will struggle to demand austerity from employees at lower administrations and civil servants.
