The Portuguese Government is about to announce increases in civil servants’ wages between 2015 and 2020.
The IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank are about to complete the adjustment programme and meanwhile, the President has declared that he would welcome an increase in the civil servants’ wages in the coming years.
Government appears to be leaning towards an increase in wages, in line with the President’s opinion. This demonstrates concern over the upcoming European elections in May 2014 and Parliamentary elections in 2015.
Increasing civil servants’ pay could potentially result in lower corruption levels, as motivated and relatively well-paid civil servants would have a lower tendency to accept bribes. However, a number of arguments can be made against any increases in civil servants’ wages at this stage:
- A number of cuts in the wages of civil servants were proposed from 2008 onwards but the Constitutional Court blocked their implementation. As a result, unit labour costs are back at 2008 levels in the public sector, while there has been a decrease unit labour costs in the private sector. From this perspective, nothing has changed since the beginning of the crisis, for civil servants.
- Any increase in wages would have to be justified with improvements in services provided by the State. However, there is evidence that the public is not satisfied with the level and quality of services provided. In its 2013 report (Third European Quality of Life Survey – Quality of society and public services), the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions finds that the perceived quality of public services in Portugal is well below European average.
Source: Eurofound (2013), Third European Quality of Life Survey – Quality of society and public services, Publications Officeof the European Union, Luxembourg
I do not mind paying civil servants well, as long as I receive a good service in return. The main problem is the low perceived quality of public services in Portugal and from this perspective, increasing wages does not make any sense at this stage.
Innovation Models 
I beg to differ:
1. The Constitutional Court “blocked” the unconstitutional bills, in the same way a Civil Courts “blocks” the criminals who intentionally break the law.
The usage of the therm “block” is not innocent, its part of a rhetoric that seeks to make the case that the Constitutional Court and the Portuguese Constitution are “blocking” the much needed reforms (that apparently cannot be made respecting democracy).
The Constitutional Court did nothing more than its job.
2. Over 80% of all the austerity measures were in fact accepted by the Constitutional Court while the harshest measures – that where also unconstitutional – were admitted on the condition of being “temporary”.
These measures included a cut in all salaries of civil servants and increased taxation amounting to over 20% of their yearly salaries.
How can one claim “nothing has changed since the beginning of the crisis for civil servants”?
3. We cannot talk about a recent report without comparing to previous ones. If we compare the most recent report with similar reports and studies from before the crisis, what the evidence says is that the perception of the level of quality of the services have dropped dramatically since the blind austerity policies started being implemented.
As an example and according to this study from 2008 ( http://www.fep.up.pt/docentes/cbrito/Tese%20-%20Claudia%20Carvalho.pdf), the Lojas do Cidadão, a network of one-stop government service stores that concentrated all the services the state provides to the citizens simplifying and reducing bureaucracy, a system that was built over the last decade and that had satisfaction levels of 92% (!) has been thoroughly disassembled, destroying all the know-how gained over that period. Same can be said of medical services of recognized international excellence and so on. How sad and unproductive.
So maybe the change in “perception” has to do with the fact that services with nothing less than excellent track record have been dismantled for no reason. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that the remaining services have been reduced to a fraction and brought to disruption by having to serve an increasing amount of people, with no conditions whatsoever being provided to workers – for example with basic supplies such as printer ink, hand soap or toilet paper having to be bought by the public servants with their own money so they can continue to do their job!
When was the last time you took toilet paper from your home to your companies office?
We cannot complain about the outcome when the outcome is exactly what was intended:
To degrade the welfare state to the point where people will runaway from it, and then hand it over to a few private companies.
4. As for the alleged increases in civil servants wages, unfortunately it reeks that its just a desperate electoral maneuver to try to minimize the predictable defeat the right wing will have in the upcoming European elections..