The strike committee demands the participation of Minister Llop in the negotiation
MADRID, 28 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The strike committee of the Lawyers of the Administration of Justice (LAJ) and the Ministry directed by Pilar Llop have met this Tuesday for the fourth time to try to put an end to the indefinite strike that the body began on January 24 in search of salary improvements to compensate for the workload they have assumed in recent years. “As we expected, the Ministry has presented us with a proposal, but what it has presented to us is absolutely unacceptable,” said Luis Toribio, one of the members of the strike committee, who has urged the minister to participate in the negotiations.
The representative of the LAJ has explained to the press upon leaving the Ministry that they are waiting for the Llop team to contact them again during the day to continue with the negotiation. He has specified, however, that so far there has been “no progress”. “We are waiting for them to call us again, here, now,” he pointed out.
The strike committee was scheduled for this Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. After a little more than an hour of meeting behind closed doors, the LAJ have left the headquarters located at calle de San Bernardo, number 21, in Madrid.
“We have responded with another counterproposal, included in the letter that we presented yesterday, with a modification. The Ministry, in our opinion, is not making any progress. Contrary to us, we are always trying to negotiate and offer alternative solutions. But the proposal made by the Ministry does not take us anywhere”, Toribio indicated.
In the framework of his statement, the representative of the LAJ has stressed that they need the presence of Minister Llop to unblock the negotiation because they consider that the team with which they are sitting at the table “lacks the capacity to negotiate”.
“We need someone with the real ability to negotiate (…) The minister has to unravel this. We have demanded that the minister appear once and for all because she is always missing in the most serious conflict that the Administration is facing today of Justice,” he said.
Since the strike began, the LAJ and the Ministry have met three times. The first took place on Thursday, February 16; that time they spent more than 15 hours at the headquarters of the Ministry and ended without an agreement and with mutual reproaches between the parties for maintaining immovable positions.
The second meeting was last Friday, and although that time they also sat down and got up from the table without agreement –and within the hour and a half they had planned– they managed to set the appointment for this Monday on the calendar to continue with the negotiation. Yesterday Monday they met, unsuccessfully, for the third time.
This Tuesday, upon his arrival at the Ministry, Juan José Yáñez, also a member of the strike committee, said that he hoped that today’s meeting would progress a little more, because yesterday had been “a very disappointing day.”
In statements to the press, he made ugly the participation of the Secretary of State for Justice, Antonio ‘Tontxu’ Rodríguez. “When Mr. Rodríguez leaves, it seems that things are going backwards. On Friday he had made some progress. Yesterday we went back. We have not just seen clearly what attitude the Ministry has,” he added.
Yáñez insisted that progress should be made in the negotiation “because that is what the Congress of Deputies has requested” and “that is what the autonomous communities are asking for.” “This has to be resolved now. We hope that now there will be a serious offer. That it will change the direction and course and that things will move forward,” he added. And, in line, she stressed that “perhaps” who had to enter the meeting was “the minister.”
The conflict – which already leaves some 223,000 views suspended and some 800 million euros blocked by the stoppage – has its origin in “the lack of salary adaptation to the greater functions and responsibilities attributed by Law 13/2009, discharged to the judges, and increased in successive reforms”, especially that of 2015, which –they denounce– has caused an “unbearable imbalance”.
The conveners point out as a “trigger” of the conflict the agreement that Justice signed in December 2021 with the unions of the general bodies “without properly developing the salary adjustment to the latest procedural reforms provided for in the second paragraph of Additional Provision 157 of the Law 11/2020 of the General State Budget for 2021”.
In these six weeks, the convening associations –the Progressive Union of LAJ (UPSJ), the Independent Association of Lawyers (AinLAJ) and the Illustrious College of LAJ– have registered a participation of between 85% and 73%, while that the Ministry has observed between 33.92% and 18.9% follow-up.
