The Austrian Government's declared objective is to have the cost of public administration grow more slowly than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Its recent successes include reducing public administration costs, excluding pensions, from 5% of GDP in 1994 to 4.5% in 1998. The strategy is to provide incentives for greater efficiency and to examine critically the kind of task being performed. Greater service orientation is also to be achieved. Likewise, the Government has put a brake on granting job tenure. The Public Service Trade Union (Gewerkschaft Öffentlicher Dienst, GÖD) claims there are now 2,500 Federal employees fulfilling the requirements for tenure who are being kept waiting.
The Austrian Government and the public service trade union, GÖD, have been negotiating a partial reform of tenure and salaries in the civil service, to be effective from 1 January 1999. While they had basically reached agreement on pay by summer 1998, they are still at odds over positions to be reserved for tenured staff.
The Austrian Government's declared objective is to have the cost of public administration grow more slowly than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Its recent successes include reducing public administration costs, excluding pensions, from 5% of GDP in 1994 to 4.5% in 1998. The strategy is to provide incentives for greater efficiency and to examine critically the kind of task being performed. Greater service orientation is also to be achieved. Likewise, the Government has put a brake on granting job tenure. The Public Service Trade Union (Gewerkschaft Öffentlicher Dienst, GÖD) claims there are now 2,500 Federal employees fulfilling the requirements for tenure who are being kept waiting.
In 1997, the ,GÖD and the Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium für Finanzen, BMF) began to negotiate a reform of the pay structure of so-called "contract employees", that is, non-tenured civil service staff (AT9706117F). Because of the prevalence and divisiveness of the pension reform issue (AT9711144F), these negotiations were then postponed until 1998. Having resumed, they are now being conducted with extreme tact, since the Ministry's wider aim is to replace most tenured positions in the long term with contract positions. An attractive pay structure for contract positions, especially as seen from the vantage point of new entrants, is an important element in the BMF's strategy. The GÖD is opposed to phasing out tenure but it is in favour of reforming the pay of contract employees. Despite the caution being shown, the negotiations have been declared dead more than once. They were meant to be concluded by early June - that is, before the start of the Austrian Presidency of the EU- but were then given a July deadline - ie before the Parliament's summer recess - and will now carry on into the autumn.
The negotiators have basically agreed on the pay structure. The hitch they have not been able to overcome since May is the BMF's desire to open up all positions to contract employees as the GÖD wants to permit them only in the lowest levels of the hierarchy.
The pay reform for contract employees will initially cost about ATS 500 million annually (a 1% rise in tenured salaries, by comparison, costs ATS 1.7 billion). This will be financed from the budget and not by cutting staff elsewhere. The new pay structure is made up of higher entry salaries - they could be up to 40% above tenured salaries - but a more gradual subsequent rise than in tenured positions. They will also comprise a performance component and an extra pension of up to 10% of the final salary financed from a separate pension fund. The Government wants to limit the option of switching to tenured employment to the first five years of Federal employment.
There are currently about 60,000 contract employees, roughly one quarter of Federal employment.
Eurofound recommends citing this publication in the following way.
Eurofound (1998), Negotiations continue over civil service reforms, article.
