The next two years will go down in Osakidetza's memory as those with the greatest stabilization of employment in the recent history of the Basque Health Service. The Department of Health is going to launch two large Public Employment Offers (OPE) that will be resolved before the end of 2024.

The first is a typical OPE that will start next June and will end in November. Divided into two phases, it will assign a total of 3,535 official positions in Osakidetza to health workers from more than fifty different professional categories. It is a traditional opposition that should have been held before -it is the one corresponding to the 2018-2019 exercises-, but the pandemic has delayed its start-up.

The second OPE will be convened this year and must be resolved before the end of 2024. It is the one that must comply with the Law on urgent measures to reduce temporary employment in public employment, approved by the central government last December. A norm that aspires to reduce temporary employment in public administration to below 8%, as demanded by the European Union.

Health, together with education, are the two sectors that have a higher proportion of temporary workers. In the case of Osakidetza, according to the unions, it affects about a third of the workforce, although at times it has reached 40%.

To comply with this central government law, Osakidetza is going to hold a stabilization OPE endowed with 3,723 places. A part of them (1,557) will be assigned via merit competition and the rest through a 'soft OPE'.

The first route does not include taking an exam and is planned for those "temporary" toilets who have been working since before 2016 or who have joined later but occupy a position generated prior to that year.

The second alternative is aimed at positions that as of December 31, 2020 had been occupied by temporary staff for more than three years. It does include the completion of an exercise but this will not be eliminatory in case of failure. The note of the test will be added to the merits that the applicants accredit and that will be defined when the bases are published.

Minister Sagardui explained this morning in the Basque Parliament the main lines of this "broad process to stabilize the workforce" of the Basque Health Service, with which the initial objective of the department will be "doubled" for the period 2020-2024. It will go from assigning nearly 4,000 official positions to almost 8,000 "in two years", according to the head of Health.