MADRID, 7 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) -
The Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, will appear this Monday at the Commission for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Agreements of the Toledo Pact of Congress to report on the general lines of her department regarding pensions during this legislature.
The head of the department already appeared in Congress last January, but to report on policies related to Social Security and migration. This week she will appear in the Lower House to report on the other competence that she has under her Ministry, pensions.
Although she may make an announcement about a law or reform that this legislature wants to carry out, Elma Saiz is expected to report on the negotiations between the Government, unions and employers on different issues related to pensions.
In fact, on Monday morning Saiz brings together the social dialogue table on pensions. One of the issues that is on the table is to involve mutual insurance companies in the recognition of temporary disability and thus improve waiting times for health care for working people, and the regulation of the reduction coefficients to be established in early retirement.
Regarding the new role of mutual insurance companies, there are differences between unions and employers, since the former accuse the latter of wanting to transfer to the mutual insurance companies the benefits that currently belong to the public health service.
Regarding the reducing coefficients, it is worth remembering that the pension reform carried out by José Luis Escrivá in 2021 included a reduction in the minimum age to retire in painful, dangerous or unhealthy activities.
But this reduction requires a regulatory development that Elma Saiz's department is negotiating within the framework of social dialogue. The idea is that the rule that regulates this reduction in the retirement age includes studies on the accident rate and danger in the sector, as well as factors of hardship and toxicity of working conditions.
After meeting on several occasions, the unions have confirmed that there is considerable agreement regarding dangerousness, but not so much when it comes to criteria for recognizing the hardship of a job, which refers to the development of an activity that involves constant physical and mental effort due to the presence of unhealthy environments.
UGT accused the Government of wanting to apply reducing coefficients to mainly male professionals and not to others such as caring for dependent people, which is most often performed by women.
Saiz will also report in Congress on pension spending, which registers a new record each month due to its revaluation in accordance with the CPI. In March, for example, Social Security allocated 12,693.1 million euros to the payment of the ordinary monthly payroll of contributory pensions, 6.2% more than the same month in 2023.
Likewise, it will offer information on the status of the Reserve Fund, known colloquially as 'pension piggy bank' and which the Government intends to fill with 25,000 million euros at the end of the legislature, at a rate of 5,000 million annually, thanks to the contributions of the Intergenerational Equity Mechanism (MEI).
