The Luxembourg Army Professional Union (SPAL) has welcomed improvements to military terms and conditions passed by the Chamber, describing the legislation as long-overdue progress on demands the union has been pressing politicians to address for some time. The approved measures expand and increase allowances and contributions for volunteer soldiers, while also raising the basic salary of the volunteer soldier to the level of the unqualified minimum wage. SPAL has made clear, however, that this should be regarded as a first step rather than a final settlement.
SPAL President Christian Schleck welcomed the increases whilst noting an important reservation: the expanded allowances and compensations will not be subject to contributions. He also raised concerns that civil servants and volunteer soldiers are still not being treated on an equal footing. “It would have made far more sense to keep the two in parallel, in terms of the indemnity and above all in terms of the recovery hours earned per day in the field”, he said. “That is also a point of criticism from our side, what is pensionable later, and I think we need to revisit and improve that in future. We are glad the minister still has an open ear, as there is still a further package of measures to come, and I think we will need to discuss that again.”
Volunteer soldiers are to receive €530 more per month as part of the first tranche of measures to be implemented, a development that Democratic Party Defence Minister Yuriko Backes first flagged in December. Schleck praised the speed with which this was achieved.
Schleck was full of praise for the minister as well, saying she truly deserved credit for managing to raise the volunteer’s salary in such a short space of time. He noted that the union had been given just four days to submit their opinion to the Chamber of Civil Servants and Public Employees, which he acknowledged was relatively tight. Nevertheless, he said the union was pleased when important matters were acted upon so quickly.
He added that there were some good ideas already in the pipeline that they had been informed of, though others were viewed more critically. Now that the final texts were available, he stressed that the package would need to be assessed as a whole, cautioning against simply tinkering at the margins rather than keeping the bigger picture in mind. In his view, a clear guiding principle of modernising the statute remained indispensable.
That said, SPAL does not agree with all of the proposed measures. “As to whether recruiting non-residents will prove to be the big move, we remain sceptical for now, as we do not see the numbers behind it. But as I said, everything remains to be seen. As for recruiting specialists at a higher level, we can have that conversation, but recruiting at the level of basic soldier, non-commissioned officer, and officer, we view that as rather more problematic.”
In a separate development announced this morning, Claude Robinet is to replace Steve Thull as Chief of Staff of the Army in October. The army union views the appointment positively, describing it as the renewal they had been hoping for.
