Lawyers of the administration of justice have concentrated this Wednesday before the City of Justice of Barcelona on the occasion of the strike called in the sector. Andreu Dalmau (EFE)
The strike called for this Wednesday by the Progressive Union of Lawyers of the Administration of Justice (UPSJ) has forced the suspension of thousands of hearings in courts throughout Spain, according to data provided by the organizers.
The unemployment monitoring figures, however, fluctuate between 30.34% (percentage provided by the Ministry of Justice based on the data of civil servants who have not gone to work) and 70% (disseminated by the UPSJ).
According to this association, the strike has forced the suspension of 1,842 trials (of the 2,631 that are reported on average each day in Spain) and 73,667 statements (of the 105,239 reported on average each day).
Among the suspended hearings, some statements scheduled for this morning at the National High Court in the framework of
the Púnica case
, the statements scheduled at the Investigating Court Number 6 of Seville within the
case of the ERE
and the trial in Girona against a participant in the demonstration after the
procés
sentence , for which the Prosecutor's Office requests six and a half years in prison for attacking the authority.
According to Justice, however, justice has worked this Wednesday "within normality, without notable incidents"
The lawyers of the administration of justice (former judicial secretaries) claim to have direct dialogue with the Government (now falls to the union organizations) and a "salary adjustment" in line with the new powers they assumed in 2009 after the implementation of the new Office Judicial. "More than 600 new skills were assigned to us and the salary has not been adjusted," says Juan José Yáñez, a member of the UPSJ board. The Government announced a few days ago that the Council of Ministers scheduled for next Tuesday will approve a salary increase for lawyers in the administration of justice of 195 euros, which is equivalent to 2,430 euros per year (5.26% of their remuneration) to which must be added to the 2% salary increase for the entire public sector.The association calling the strike calls this announcement by the Government "interested" and complains that the ministry has negotiated it with the generalist unions, apart from the representative associations of this body, which have had no intervention.
The right to own collective bargaining is another of the demands of the former judicial secretaries, but the department of Pilar Llop rejects this possibility because the legitimacy to negotiate on behalf of the workers is held by the general unions and does not exist in the entire public sector. a body such as that of the lawyers of the administration of justice that has its own recognized collective bargaining.
The Secretary of State for Justice, Tontxu Rodríguez, is highly critical of the actions of the association calling the strike, the second most representative of a body made up of around 3,800 civil servants.
“We are willing to strengthen the framework of labor relations with public workers, but always complying with the law;
that is to say, with union representations with recognized negotiating capacity, but not with professional associations that do not represent the public interest and that are of a private nature, and it is something that is established in organic law 1/2002 of March 22 [regulator of the right of association," says Rodríguez, who considers that this Wednesday's strike was "a strike between the associations themselves in a game of power and mutual distrust between them."
The Secretary of State maintains that, in addition, UPSJ "has not transparently transmitted" the content of the meeting that the association held with the ministry on January 13.
“They are misinforming and instrumentalizing the body of officials with the sole objective of channeling the interests of the convening association.
They only call a strike out of pride and resentment and not to defend the rights of some public workers”, criticizes Tontxu Rodríguez.