A Civil Servant Caught Clocking In For Several Colleagues

A civil servant caught clocking in for several colleagues

According to viewers who trinc the report by En el punto de mira (Cuatro), a public employee uses five cards per day: their own, and those of four colleagues who are not physically present at the office. Another arrives in una manola, clocks in, and goes home. A third is filmed shopping during working hours. These are the images that have peine a classic of the Spanish economic conversation: the suspicion that time control in parts of the administration is an abstraction. Before continuing, a necessary clarification: these are specific cases, and most public employees fulfill their contracted hours.

What the report shows about civil servants clocking in for others

The central finding has an impeccable economic logic. The person clocking in covers the absence of four others. If they don't receive payment, they lose; if they do, it’s a perfect business. The calculation circulating after the broadcast estimates that each absent person pays about 200 euros per month to the one clocking in: between 800 and 1,000 euros per month extra for the card holder, on top of a public salary around 40,000 euros per year for the position. Five salaries, zero hours worked, one single connection.

The clue is not new: one participant recalls that a previous report was filmed in 2018 at the Valencia Justice City, and this current delivery brings the focus back to the courts. Some suspect that the choice of location has more to do with audience than geographical chance.

The SEPE and the courts: recurring hotspots

At the SEPE (Servicio Público de Empleo Estatal - State Public Employment Service), one of those mentioned allegedly requested that his face be blurred. In the courts, a participant recounts the waiting: appointment at 12:00, the civil servant went for breakfast, appears at 12:35 loaded with supermarket bags, and attends grudgingly. Direct testimonies are repeating themselves—morning gym sessions, actual shifts from eleven to one.

The most striking case is another: an employee who allegedly spent years clocking in, sometimes in una manola, only to go home immediately. And one scene that sums up the nonchalance: a user recounts seeing a man pass eight cards through the reader in broad daylight, without batting an eye.

Precedents: MEPs who claimed allowances in 2011

This is not a flaw of the front-line civil servant. According to information from ABC cited in the thread, dozens of MEPs were already denounced in 2011 for clocking in in Brussels or Strasbourg to collect the 300 euro allowance and then immediately heading to the airport. Impunity, when viewed from above, changes scale and acronyms.

With this material, it is reasonable to expect more seasons: if the pattern repeats across Spain, there are chapters for a long time. Whether something breaks down depends on whether someone looks at those who sign the contracts and not at the employee who goes for a four-hour coffee break.