The Minister of Finance, Jorge Quiroz, said that this week the names of the commission to review the Administrative Statute will be announced. The measure was announced on Sunday and on Monday details regarding its roadmap were provided. Regarding its composition, a cross-sector commission is expected, led by an independent economist, and its function will be to review the current Administrative Statute, that is, the labor regulations governing public officials, which dates back to the dictatorship. Minister Quiroz highlighted the objective of the measure in the context of generating fiscal consolidation in the short and long term. In this context, Pulso spoke with former Deputy Minister of Finance, Alejandro Weber, who was one of the drafters of the project that unsuccessfully sought to modify the rules of public employment during Sebastián Piñera's last administration. The project you drafted was not even able to be processed. Is today a good political moment to advance changes to public employment? -Yes, it is a good time to do so and very necessary. This situation began to develop last year when we started to see questions about the functioning of the State due to abuse of medical leave. Remember that it was detected, thanks to an investigation by the Comptroller's Office, that 25,000 officials left Chile using false medical leaves. That was the culmination of certain abuses or bad practices in the State that require different regulation. This discontent among citizens with the public sector has a long history. On the other hand, people also see how fiscal spending has increased by an average of 3.5% annually in real terms over the last 10 years. Public employment in the Central Government has grown by more than 50% in the last 10 years and almost 100% in the last 15 years, compared to a growth of about 13% in private employment. When people see this significant increase in public spending and personnel, but also see that it is not accompanied by better services to citizens, reduction of waiting lists... it generates a lot of discontent. This is a good moment to take that discontent proactively, to generate changes. It is also a good political moment because the Government is in a very good position following the approval of the mega-reform. It is evident that it controls the agenda, and has support within Congress that would allow it to advance, even if not with a comprehensive or structural reform. What are the main flaws of the rigidity of public employment today in Chile? -We have a Law of the Administrative Statute or State personnel regime that is regularly violated. In other words, we hypocritically deal with what is written. For example, strikes in the public sector are illegal and yet, year after year, we see various public services paralyze their functions and the regulator ignores this blatant violation of the rules of the game. The second point is that public employment, whose latest regulations were made before the return to democracy, establishes that the plant should be predominant; 80% of jobs should be permanent. However, that is not the case today: less than a third of employment is permanent, and the rest is contracted or honorary, which are more flexible, discretionary modalities on paper, and were the escape routes found by all governments, without exception, to incorporate trusted personnel. The third point is that, due to the lack of agreements between Congress and the Executive to modernize the administrative statute, we have organically filled gaps with "patches." These were generated by the Comptroller's Office through successive rulings that filled statutory voids, such as legitimate trust, which was reversed by the current comptroller very appropriately (...) this meant that, in practice, contracted officials became a new permanent staff, that is, unmovable. These are three examples of how perverse, hypocritical, and irrational the rules of the game are today, especially how they are practically administered. Is there viability for major changes to the administrative statute or should we focus on more surgical reforms? -During President Piñera's second term, we tried to make a structural change. This structural change was discussed for several years with ANEF and, unfortunately, we did not find the opportunity to do so due to the effects of the social outbreak and the pandemic. It is very difficult to generate a general modification of the system, but some relevant surgical changes that allow for flow modifications are possible. What does that mean? It means it is very difficult to change the conditions of public employment for the more than 535,000 people currently in the central government... that number increases to over 800,000 if municipal employees are included. But it is entirely relevant to start affecting the rules of the game for those who join public employment from now on. Even making surgical changes to the Administrative Statute would be an advance. Is it possible this time to overcome resistance from pressure groups like ANEF to make changes to the Administrative Statute? -The evidence we have learned in recent years and the citizen discontent with bad practices in the public sector make employee associations more receptive to the need for change. They will be much more open to accepting adjustments that allow for a more flexible and modern system that also makes sense to citizens. It is also important to say regarding the legitimacy of these changes that the proposal we made at the time was based on the cross-sector work of four research centers that published these results at the beginning of 2018. These centers were as diverse as the Public Studies Center (CEP), Espacio Público, Chile 21, and Libertad y Desarrollo. NEWSLETTERPulso PMLunes a viernes, 12:30 PML The most relevant in markets, companies, and business: timely information, context, and content to make better decisions. By subscribing, you accept the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policies of La Tercera.