AN EXTRA 100 driving examiners will be employed across Spain from next year, of whom 32 will have been drafted in from the Armed Forces, says the country's traffic authority.
At present, the majority of examiners are on strike over working conditions, pay and staff shortages and have threatened to do so indefinitely if improvements are not made.
This is expected to force waiting lists for tests up to at least six months.
General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) boss Gregorio Serrano says the current payroll, of 774 examiners, is expected to rise to 876 by next year, net of retirements planned between now and 2018 – around 52 in total.
But Serrano denies that as many as 150,000 driving tests have been cancelled as a result of the strikes, which started in June and are taking place every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
He says 65,000 practical tests have been called off since the strikes began, but that in June – the first month of industrial action – 80,000 candidates went through their tests, the same number as in April when there were no strikes.
However, he did not concede that more tests would normally take place in a normal June than in April, since most young adults take their lessons and final practical and theory exams between mid-June and mid-September when they break up from college.
This said, Serrano admitted the 80,000 tests in June were well below the 105,000 taken in May before examiners downed tools.
And in 2016, a total of 1.11 million driving tests were taken – 100,000 more than in 2015 when there were more examiners on duty.
He insists that the DGT has 'busted a gut' to improve working conditions and pay for driving test examiners 'even to the point of sticking our necks out' and 'making extra concessions'.
And during the last meeting he held with examiners, they apparently told him 'not to bother calling them again' unless it was to tell them they would get a pay rise.
Only one of the nine unions representing DGT workers has called the strike, Serrano explained, since all other terms of the working conditions agreement drawn up in December 2015 besides the issue of a pay increase had been met – including that of reducing the number of tests per day from 13 to 12 per examiner 'other than in exceptional circumstances'.
And the DGT is unable to make a unilateral decision to give anyone a salary rise, argues Serrano, who says his department has 'applied to the treasury on numerous occasions' for higher wages for examiners, without success.
He agrees the pay increase demand is 'fair' and understandable, but that it would not be easy to explain to other civil servants in high-risk jobs such as the National Police, Guardia Civil and prison staff, who would be furious to see driving examiners getting more money when they did not – and, in fact, this could lead to a domino effect of strikes across the board.
Training courses have started for new examiners, most of whom will be recruited in-house.
The next course in September has seen 24 candidates put their names down, and around 20 of them are expected to pass the final assessments.
Overall, the net increase in examiner numbers is expected to be 'significant', Serrano assures, 'offering a solution to a problem seen in all areas of the public sector' – a lack of employees.
