“With these salaries it is impossible to live on Ibiza”, says Rosa Planells, spokeswoman for the nursing assistants union USAE, during the concentration in front of the delegation of Education to demand the insular bonus for public servants. A protest was held simultaneously yesterday on all the islands of the Balearic Islands except Formentera called by the platform Union for Equality in Public Services (Unisep). Yesterday was focused on teachers, hence it was called in front of Education, but in the coming weeks will be repeated in other jobs, they said.

Salaries with insular bonus

“The insular bonus on our salaries would allow us to cope with the cost of the islands and in particular the Pitiüses, where we suffer a double or triple insularity,” says Carles Rizo, spokesman for the education union ANPE while behind him fifty public employees (health, teachers, security forces, government workers …) launch their battle cry: “Equal residence! Equal residence!”. The group hoists a dozen inflatable bananas with which they remind us that what they are asking for is already available in the Canary Islands. “There they have an insular bonus on their salaries of between 300 and 400 euros more than in the Balearic Islands,” says Rizo, who believes they are on the way to achieving it.

“The decree that will govern the budgets for this coming year has been approved, there is a significant increase and we want them to remember the public services,” continues the ANPE spokesman, who stresses that the high cost of living and especially of housing that is recorded in Eivissa affects both those who move from outside the island as well as residents.

“Justice officials are earning between 60 and 70 euros per month on their salaries for insularity while in the smaller islands of the Canary Islands are earning between 400 and 500 euros. To that we must add that in the Canaries it also affects seniority, so that the contribution base is higher,” comments Sabino Aramburu, spokesman for CSIF. “We also must add the aggravating factor that there they have tax exemptions that we do not have”, continues Aramburu, who highlights the problems they have to fill positions: “I can guarantee that between 40 to 50% are vacant or covered by interims and that it is solved with an insularity bonus”. The CSIF spokesman gives as an example a recent case: “A young man from Tenerife who passed the opposition and was going to come to work in the insular direction. “He is not going to come. He’s going to be paid 1,100 euros, so he’s not coming.”