The Ministries of Interior and Defense are studying to expand the number of prison officers with the incorporation preferentially to the template of Spanish prisons of professional soldiers to leave the Army. The plan includes offering seats “exclusively to military professionals, soldiers and sailors that are in the last ten years of his long term commitment and for the reservists of special availability” of the Army, according to an email sent Tuesday by the deputy director general of Human Resources of Prisons, Eugenio Arribas, unions at the prison to which he has had access to this newspaper.

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official Sources in the department confirm that the plan is in study, but ensure that it is in a very initial stage and yet to be profiling both with the Ministry of Defence as with the Treasury. The trade union organisations of Prisons have already shown their reluctance to the measure.

The letter from the senior person responsible for Penitentiary Institutions detailing the incorporation of the military is considered “very favorable” to increase the number of troops in service in prisons and that the action was already referred to in the General State Budgets of 2018, which will remain in force after extended. The idea is that the squares that are called for military professionals do not compute to effects of the replacement rate (which is formed to cover the low and retirement of officers of prisons), but which serve to increase the workforce, standing at 23,000 workers, many of them above the age of 50, as they come denouncing for years the trade unions of Penitentiary Institutions. “What we consider to be very favorable, because we understand that it would be effective that would be added to the Offer of Public Employment-as-usual”, added to the high charge of Prisons in the letter.

The measure would allow the Defense to give an output and labor to a part of the approximately 50,000 military professionals who will have to leave here to 2036 the Armed Forces to comply with the 45 years. In June, the minister of Defense in the functions, Margarita Robles, signed a similar agreement with the president of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP), Abel Caballero, mayor of Vigo,for which the councils will reserve 20% of places in the calls for access to the Local Police for the professional military of soldiers and sailors with over five years of service.The convention also provides for the participation of military personnel to a career in the public calls for the provision of posts of staff officer.

The proposal for Prisons has caught by surprise to the unions prison. This Wednesday, the main organization, Acaip-UGT, has issued a statement in which emphasized that the proposal was “absolutely novel” and that until now had never been put on the table by the Ministry of the Interior. The union asked for urgent information to know “what are the terms and conditions of this recruitment, to what concept, if there are quotas, and how to be structured, to what squares access”, as well as the content of the agreement that was signed with Defence. Sources of Penitentiary Institutions insisted on Wednesday that the idea is still "in an initial phase. It is true that there is that possibility and you are going to study, but we have not yet finalized anything with Defense," he added.

The proposal is known only a week after the Interior was obliged to spend about 240 civil guards and police officers to strengthen the security outside of the 15 prisons existing in Madrid, Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha after it was desert the public competition to fill 200 places of private security guards in the same. The financial failure of Ombuds, the security company that up to that time serving in these prisons, and the refusal of other companies to attend the competition due to the high amount of debt they should take on, forced Inside to put in place a contingency plan until the award of the new contest. The measure, which became effective at 12 of the night of the 31st of December, has caused some problems, as reported by trade unions of prison. However, sources of the Civil Guard insist that “at no time there has been a loss of security” of the prisons.

The measure also occurs in a stalled labor dispute in Penitentiary Institutions starting from the stage of the Government of Mariano Rajoy, and which has been stepped up after the arrival to power of the PSOE and the birth of a movement that presents itself as “asindical” under the name of Your Abandonment I Can Kill. Traditional union organizations call for a matching wage similar to that of the executive of the PP was agreed with the representatives of the national police and civil guards, in addition to an expansion of the templates and the grant to the correctional workers of the condition of agents of the authority. Until now, the negotiations have been stuck waiting for new budgets. The announcement of the incorporation of professional soldiers is the first movement in months.

Date Of Update: 08 January 2020, 17:00