There are already some 223,000 views suspended and some 800 million euros blocked due to the break
MADRID, 27 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The strike committee of the Lawyers of the Administration of Justice (LAJ) and the Ministry directed by Pilar Llop have concluded this Monday without an agreement what is already the third meeting they are holding to end the indefinite strike that the body began last January 24 in search of salary improvements, although they have been summoned again for a fourth at 11:30 a.m. this Tuesday.
“The meeting has passed without any progress, we practically left the same as we entered (…), the positions are still as far apart as at the beginning,” Luis Toribio, of the strike committee and vice president of the Illustrious National College, told the press. de Letrados, one of the organizing associations, upon leaving the Ministry of Justice.
As he explained, during the two and a half hours that the meeting lasted, the strike committee presented its “counter-offer” to the Ministry, which in a first analysis has already told them that it did not seem acceptable, although it has promised to study it. “quietly” to give an answer tomorrow and, where appropriate, offer alternatives.
Toribio has assured that the strike committee has changed its initial position somewhat, reproaching Justice for not having done the same. Thus, facing the fourth meeting, he has indicated that they trust that “the Ministry can offer something that is acceptable” for the LAJ.
Regarding the tone of the meeting, in which the Secretary of State for Justice, Tontxu Rodríguez, and the Secretary General, Manuel Olmedo, participated, the strike committee stated that it was “constructive”.
“The problem is that there is no progress in the background,” clarified Juan José Yáñez, from the Progressive Union of Judicial Secretaries (UPSJ), anticipating for this Tuesday that the LAJ will return to sit down at the negotiating table with “constructive spirit”
From the strike committee they have refused to reveal the specific content of the negotiations with the aim of favoring a result that allows ending a strike that has lasted for more than a month and leaves some 223,000 views suspended and 800 million euros blocked in judicial accounts, according to the calculations of the conveners.
Since the indefinite hiatus began, the LAJ and the Ministry have met twice. The first took place on Thursday, February 16. Then, they spent more than 15 hours in Justice 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 the negotiation.
It was at that second meeting that the Ministry sent them a document that, “in a preliminary assessment”, the LAJ considered that it could “be used to start the negotiation”, according to Toribio.
Llop, for her part, when asked last Friday about the demands of the strike committee, highlighted the measures adopted by the Ministry to improve the salary conditions of the LAJ.
He defined the LAJ as “essential workers”, although he qualified that “justice is not paralyzed”, because it currently “continues to function” with some specific stoppages due to the strike.
In addition, the minister recalled the request that she had already made on previous occasions to the Lawyers of the Administration of Justice: “Do not place yourself in maximalist positions.”
The conflict has its origin in “the lack of salary adequacy to the greater functions and responsibilities attributed by Law 13/2009, discharged to 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 four 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.
