Sile, Jhonny and André wait with a grim face at the doors of a Labor Court in Madrid. February 14 was a day marked on their calendars. After a first suspension, they hoped that the trial would take place after his dismissal from a construction company more than eight months ago. They hoped to finally know what compensation corresponds to them and to be able to collect the three payrolls that they still owe. They are between 3,000 and 7,000 euros that they need “now” because the three are still unemployed. But it could not be. The lawyer of the administration of Justice of that court seconded the indefinite strike that these officials have maintained since January 24 in demand for salary improvements. The 13 trials indicated during the morning were suspended.
X-ray of a Spanish Justice as slow as it collapsed
Further
“When will they summon us again?” Sile asks his lawyer. “We cannot know. I already have trials scheduled for 2024,” she replies, acknowledging the fear of the “avalanche” of hearings when the dispute between the lawyers and the Ministry of Justice is resolved. The conflict is still totally bitter, two days after the first meeting between the two parties, which began with the Secretary of State for Justice, Tontxu Rodríguez, accusing the lawyers of being “godlike” and of promoting a strike “against the town, without professional purpose”. The conveners, for their part, came to ask last week for the dismissal of the Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, for saying that they do not write down the revised sentences after the entry into force of the “only yes is yes” law.
The work of the 4,422 lawyers of the administration of Justice is key in courts and tribunals. These senior officials –belong to the A1 group, the same as judges and prosecutors– direct the judicial office, promote matters, issue resolutions and manage the accounts from which alimony, embargoes or compensation are paid, which have an average balance of 4,500 millions of euros. They also act as notaries public at hearings, with which their absence is forcing the suspension of thousands of trials. All this, in an already highly saturated system in which criminal matters take an average of 14 months to resolve. In the social jurisdiction —where dismissals or labor accidents are settled— the average is almost a year.
Of the 41 labor courts that are in one of the buildings on Calle de la Princesa in Madrid, six are almost paralyzed this Tuesday because their lawyers have seconded the strike. No more than 60 trials have been held. It is an example of the effects of the mobilization on the Administration of Justice, in the absence of official figures. The Ministry of Justice does not provide them. And the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) is collecting them through the territorial courts, but the information received is still “partial” and it will not disseminate it until it is comparable data, confirms a spokesman.
elDiario.es has contacted the 17 regional superior courts to request this information, but only two have provided it. This is the case of Catalonia, which has recorded 2,259 suspended performances only between January 30 and February 3. And from Murcia, which figures at 6,112 the actions paralyzed as a result of the strike until last Friday, of which 2,567 (42%) are trials. The only data that exists at the state level are those offered by the professional associations that convene it and that put more than 140,000 suspended actions, which includes trials, statements and other proceedings.
“The activity in the courts has been reduced by more than 60% and it is not higher because the minimum services are being fulfilled,” says a spokeswoman for the National College of Lawyers of the Administration of Justice (CNLAJ), promoter of the strike together with the Progressive Union of Justice Administration Lawyers (UPSJ) and the Independent Association of Justice Administration Lawyers (AINLAJ). According to the conveners, there are also 500 million euros blocked in the consignment account, where the money from bonds or embargoes is kept.
What there is official data on is the monitoring of the strike, although the figures of the organizers differ from those offered by Justice. The promoters value the follow-up of the strikes at around 80%, a figure that in the department directed by Pilar Llop lowers considerably. The monitoring of this Monday is estimated at 26.21% of the total workforce and at 37.05% if the officials who are on minimum services are subtracted. The call has dragged lawyers from the Supreme Court or the National Court, bodies little suspected of harboring social agents prone to labor claims, as stated by the UPSJ in this article published in elDiario.es. Every day of the strike, the lawyers stop entering 130 euros.
A rise of the 14.76%
The conflict that has now erupted in Minister Llop dates back more than a decade, when a procedural reform in 2009 lightened the tasks of judges and increased the powers of lawyers by 30%, although without increasing their remuneration. After 12 years waiting for a salary adjustment, the Ministry of Justice and the unions agreed in April 2021 to improve the remuneration system for these civil servants through a supplement of 195 euros gross per month, which represents an increase of 5.26% in their salary. annual salary.
In the Ministry of Justice they affirm that the salary of lawyers will grow on average by 14.76% in the next three years thanks to this increase and the increase that the salaries of civil servants will experience in general. According to data from this department, the lawyers of the administration of Justice earn between 39,011.80 and 60,826.79 euros gross per year, which is between 80% and 145% more than other officials of the General State Administration of the same levels.
After waiting more than a decade, the convening associations consider the aforementioned increase of 195 euros per month insufficient. And they recognize that this figure is at the origin of the demands in recent months, which have included another four strike calls up to the current indefinite strike.
The lawyer Juan José Yáñez, a member of the UPSJ and a member of the strike committee, affirms that the mobilization is a consequence of the “repeated breach” of the agreements committed with the Ministry of Justice. And he specifically cites two issues that the conveners consider “nuclear” and that still have not been unraveled. On the one hand, the review of the so-called population groups to improve the remuneration of lawyers assigned to places with fewer inhabitants and who “earn lower salaries with similar workloads.” And, on the other, the so-called “hook clause”, with which they claim that the salary mass of the body of lawyers cannot be less than 85% of the salary mass of the judicial career.
After three weeks of strike, Justice has convened the strike committee next Thursday. The main interlocutor on the part of the ministry will be, foreseeably, the Secretary of State for Justice, Tontxu Rodríguez, who one day before the strikes began appeared at a press conference in which he accused the organizers of promoting a “political” strike. and insisted that the lawyers “are not judges, they are not prosecutors and they will not be.” This Tuesday, in statements to Efe in Burgos, he affirmed that he trusts that an agreement will come out of that meeting to “paralyze the strike immediately.”
The conveners, however, complain that they have not even been informed of the agenda of the meeting. “We are going with all the disposition, but no documentation has been received. It is obvious that if some type of quick solution is sought, the appropriate documentation must be sent with enough time for its study, ”says Yáñez. “We are aware of the damage to the citizen and we are sorry. But we are defending a professional interest and exercising a constitutional right. We will not call off without a fair agreement, ”he adds.
The effects in the courts
In the Social Courts of Madrid, conversations about the strike are common in the corridors, where lawyers talk with their clients before being called to the hearing rooms. Posters supporting the mobilization hang on many walls. Others warn that the planned trials “are suspended.” “Today we have been lucky. But the uncertainty is total. We do not find out whether or not there is a trial until the time it is scheduled. It seems that our time does not matter ”, laments the lawyer Mauricio González, who has his office in Marbella (Málaga) and has traveled to Madrid this Tuesday to attend a trial. This time he has not made the trip in vain.
In one of the adjoining banks, several workers in the commerce sector are talking, hoping to hold their trial after a collective dismissal. “We are worried, but it seems that after two suspensions —for other reasons— today it will be possible to celebrate,” says one of them, relieved. The strike is also a matter of conversation in the gown room, where lawyers take the clothes they have to wear in court. The lawyer José María Garrido is one of those who will leave this Tuesday without holding the trial that he had scheduled. He is the third to have been suspended since the strike began. “The harmed are the citizens,” he laments.
