The powder keg that the Administration of Justice has become in recent months has not yet been resolved. The Ministry directed by Pilar Llop has managed to avoid the threat of a strike by judges and prosecutors with an agreement to raise their salaries by an average of 450 euros per month, but the conflict with the 45,000 officials of the judicial offices, who are demanding improvements, continues without labor and remuneration and changes in the efficiency law promoted by the Government. Managers, processors, aid or forensics have been carrying out intermittent strikes since April and have been on indefinite strike since Monday.
The Constitutional recognizes that delays in signaling trials violate the rights of citizens
Further
All this, when the courts and tribunals had not yet begun to recover from the two-month strike by the former court clerks, which left 350,000 trials and hearings suspended. That mobilization also ended with the Ministry of Justice putting money on the table. Specifically, with a game of 22.7 million euros that will mean adding up to 450 euros to the payrolls of the 4,379 lawyers. In the case of judges and prosecutors, the government disbursement is 46.7 million euros.
The agreements that the Executive has forged with these groups have led the representatives of the civil servants to describe the Government as “classist” due to the “comparative grievance” that it entails offering better salaries to lawyers, judges and prosecutors – civil servants of the A1 group, with higher salaries—while still not making a firm offer to the officials who are in charge of customer service and other key matters in the courts such as registering and processing documents or notifying proceedings, orders and sentences, and whose salaries are much higher low.
“Judging intentions is risky, but everyone can understand that it is an unacceptable difference in treatment. And, all of this, from a government that calls itself progressive and defender of workers’ rights”, affirms Javier Jordán, vice president of the Justice sector of the CSIF union.
The CCOO union has directly accused the Executive of giving “discriminatory and class-based treatment to 93% of the personnel of the general and special forces”, in the words of its spokesman for Justice, Luis Calero, who has been questioning that the Justice departments and the Treasury recognize the functions —and reward them for it— to the most privileged part of the judicial collective.
Stalled negotiations
Negotiations between Llop’s department and the officials’ representatives are at a standstill. Both parties have not met since April 24 and the Ministry of Justice has not presented any economic proposal for the moment. Sources from the department headed by Pilar Llop insist on their “disposition” to dialogue and agreement, but allude to the particularity of this negotiation, because although the officials depend organically on the Government, there are 12 autonomies that have transferred powers in matters of Justice . They also recall that for the period 2022-2024 there is an agreement with the unions for an 8% increase in the salaries of officials that can reach up to 9.5%.
The unions insist that there is no impediment to reaching an agreement because they have focused their demands on areas that depend solely on the central Executive. On the one hand, an increase in the so-called “dignified” general complement and “in line” with that achieved, first, by lawyers and, later, by judges and prosecutors, and the negotiation of functions appropriate to the work they perform.
They demand, in this regard, the paralysis of the Organic Law of Organizational Efficiency (LOEO), which, they say, imposes new working conditions without prior negotiation. “We ask for a redistribution, redefinition and clarification of the functions that we carry out in the judicial offices for the benefit of a more efficient and effective justice with its labor and remuneration recognition”, affirms Jordán.
Specifically, they demand salary increases of 430 euros per month for forensic doctors and physicians from the National Institute of Toxicology (group A1), 400 euros for managers and specialist laboratory technicians (group A2), 375 euros for processors and laboratory assistants ( group C1) and 350 euros per month for aid (group C2). It is, in the opinion of the strike committee, “a proposal for a fair wage increase.”
Jordán, from CSIF, regrets that the department led by Llop is installed in what he defines as a “wear and tear strategy”, but warns that they will continue with the mobilizations until the Government makes a “reasonable proposal” that reopens the doors to negotiation.
This same Tuesday, a group of officials demonstrated at the doors of the Ministry of Justice —while the agreement with judges and prosecutors was being signed— to exert pressure shouting “And now what, when do you summon us!” For Friday, the closing day of the electoral campaign, another demonstration is scheduled in Madrid between the headquarters of the Justice and Public Function departments.
