Cristóbal Montoro announced this week that civil servants will be able to recoup the moscosos, paid days off that do not count against their annual vacation days, which they lost when the government made various cuts to its administration. His comments have more weight than it seems, because they imply that the cutbacks that the government enacted to make Spanish workdays more efficient will be undone.
The comments could also be interpreted as a pickup note to a long passage of frozen salaries. Instead of pay raises, politician will make days off from work a form of currency in their labor negotiations.
Cleaning up the government's accounts will still require years of sacrifices on payroll spending. For one thing, the administrations have not finished key labor reforms even though recent positive data suggest that it has completed them.
Between 2006 and 2010, government payroll spending rose by 28%, but in 2013 it is still 18% more than pre-crisis levels.
The most effort has been focused on freezing salaries, trimming the number of temporary contracts and limiting how many civil servants re-enter the workforce once they retire. But we are still waiting for a deep labor reform that leaves us with a smaller and more effective government with well-paid workers.
Meanwhile, local reforms are stalled in parliament and national government reforms are also delayed as various commissions review them. The legislature keeps going and the national government has reformed areas like the financial and labor sectors, but because of political pressures it has yet to reform government itself -- the area of reform that is most within its reach.
