The strengthening of public services, the promotion of job creation or the fight against workplace accidents are priorities for the UGT, whose president of the steering committee, Patricia Ruiz, met this Friday with the Minister of the Treasury, Public Administrations and Digital Transformation of Castile-La Mancha. , Juan Alfonso Ruiz Molina, to speak about the region’s budget bill for 2025.
Ruiz Martínez evaluates “positively” the budgets that “aim to reform the welfare state” with “important” positions in the areas of health, education and social services.
According to him, “it is essential to continue to move forward in “that public services be strengthened”something the union is ready to help with, and even more so now after the “sad devastation” caused by DANA in the municipalities of the autonomous community.
Likewise, for the UGT, it is “remarkable” that the 2025 accounts advocate “greater impetus in job creation”, where they will continue to bring their “ideas, actions, collaboration to boost the labor market and helping people who are “searching so a job can be found,” as well as businesses “finding the vacancies they say they can’t find.”
The president of the region’s Union Management Commission believes that social dialogue must be “the one that mediates all active employment policies that affect people’s lives”, valuing the 40 million euros recently announced for the programs of work-study training which “will help the change of reality and the unemployment situation in the autonomous community can be reversed.
Work accidents and how to deal with them were other concerns expressed by the union for next year’s accounts, taking into account that the region’s figures, with 43 people died between January and September of 2024 (17 more than last year at this stage) are data “not only absolutely worrying but unacceptable”.
In this regard, Patricia Ruiz influenced the creation of the Institute of Occupational Health and Safety, who is convinced that next year it will experience “a powerful, necessary and adequate development”.
On the other hand, he alluded to the situation of residences and care for the elderly, emphasizing his “particular interest” so that public services are strengthened in this sector “with decent salaries”, while in health transport , he was convinced that the regional government will “respond” to the demand raised by the workers.
In the area of health, he spoke of the “long, unbearable and harmful waiting lists” that Castilla-La Mancha presents, hoping that next year it will be possible to see if the measures that will be implemented will contribute to reduce them. Likewise, he asked that a historical request such as professional career be taken into account.
Finally, Patricia Ruiz recalled that the financing of each autonomous community must be “territorially and personally balanced” and that “All citizens must benefit from the same public services, wherever they live”even if this must be accompanied by a budgetary policy. “Let no one fall into the trap of not paying taxes” and that not paying them “gives us the right to have all public services,” he warned.
For his part, Ruiz Molina explained that there are more than 284 million euros “to strengthen and improve fundamental public services.” The money with which the health infrastructure plan projected in hospital centers like Albacete or Puertollano will be followed, the “enormous work that is carried out in health centers and local clinics” or in educational establishments, where it spoke about the expansion of the campus of the University of Alcalá de Henares in Guadalajara.
As for social services, assistance resources will increase, “thinking mainly of the elderly and people with disabilities” to have “more day centers and residences” and equipment in line with current times.
Finally, the advisor mentioned the various items linked to the demographic challenge and those which finance the regional strategy against depopulation, the amount of which is greater than 2 billion euros, or 6% more than in the accounts for this financial year, for that citizens “have rights and conditions of equality in access to fundamental rights.
