Interims at the gates of… stabilization?

In a week, more than a thousand interims will change their roles for those of their students, they will sit at a desk, take out a pen and paper and face the blank page syndrome. The future and job stability of a good part of the applicants will depend on the exam, who for years, and in some cases decades, have been chaining contract after contract without knowing if next year they will have half a position or a full position in Cornago or Badarán. This is true for some, because others will not have a choice, their specialty will not and will not come out.

Behind each one of them there is a story and many efforts of those who know well in the National Union of Temporary and Permanent Workers of the Public Administration of La Rioja (PIR). Immersed in a labor limbo, last February the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) urged Spain to resolve the excessive temporary employment of Administration employees by converting long-term interim public workers into permanent positions. All this because he had confirmed what he described as “precariousness” and “abuse” that the chain of temporary contracts entails. Just a week ago the Supreme Court cooled their hopes by refusing to automatically make them permanent, although twenty-four hours later it clarified that this was not its final position and that we would have to wait for what Europe says to whom they have raised a preliminary question.

Meanwhile, LaRioja continues with the stabilization processes of an important part of the workers of an Administration in which around 43% are temporary, the majority because the position they have occupied for years has not been called for a long time and others because they were on the verge of owning it.

Agustín Parra has been working as a vocational training teacher since the 2004-2005 academic year. He started in the Wood specialty and for twelve years has been doing his thing, he says, Electrotechnical Installations. He works at the IES Cosme García and combines teaching with the hours of dedication to the National Union of Temporary and Permanent Workers of the Public Administration of La Rioja (PIR).

In his case, he has not been able to obtain the position because it has not been called since 2008. At that time he was “in his thirties and now he is 51, whatever that means.”

On Saturday he will be examined and will fight alongside 14 other candidates for the only place available, but “I present myself that way because with everything I have on me I have studied just enough and at 50 years old I can do what I can.” But he also does it to avoid giving arguments “that you have not presented yourself to the possible tests to obtain a place if, if necessary, they comply with the law and at the end of 2024 they throw us all out on the streets so that we do not chain three years of contracts” .

«I am the only person in Spain whose Community does not serve»

What happened to Marta Jiménez is ‘nonsense’. In June 2023 and after years of study, the stabilization process called by the Ministry throughout the country was presented. She took the exam and passed, but at first she did not get the position she had requested in the first place, in La Rioja. Here she had been working as a music teacher for years and here she wanted to continue. Her destination was Navarra, but the resignation of a candidate for the La Rioja position left her free rein.

A week before the start of the course, the Riojan Government notified her that they had attended to a young woman’s appeal and she was left out. She tried to recover that of Navarra but it was too late, La Rioja had to resolve the mess, they told her.

A year later it remains the same and, according to what he has investigated, “I am the only person in Spain who is not served by his Community.” He managed to get on the interim list and has been able to work in Calahorra, “but in July the positions are awarded and as I am on the list I don’t know if I will have a job, a third or nothing.” He is there, she says, in no man’s land.

«They tell us: why don’t you take the opposition exams? But not if there isn’t one!

Paz Manso de Zúniga has chained position after position, in her case as a Philosophy teacher. For six years he has been working at the IES Sagasta and before that he has gone through the Batalla de Clavijo, the IES Comercio, in Fuenmayor… He recognizes that his situation is “a little privileged” because he is one of the first on the lists and can choose which center goes.

He does not take the exam on Saturday because they have not announced places for Philosophy. “What happens with this specialty is absurd,” he says, because when it was called, only one came out, and for example, according to what he says, of the six professors in the Sagasta Philosophy department, only two are permanent. “The other four are wandering around and that way you can get involved in long-term projects.”

«Everyone says: Why don’t you get your exams? Well, maybe because they are not called, she questions, calling the system a “traffic.” “They talk about equality, merit and capacity and the basis of an opposition is that you get to deal with the topic you have studied,” she criticizes.