Around 45,000 judicial officials have been called for partial strikes of three hours a day since Monday to demand a salary increase "in line with that approved for lawyers" and the paralysis of the Organic Law on Organizational Efficiency (LOEO), which, they say , imposes new working conditions without prior negotiation.
The first day of the strike has caused the suspension of hundreds of thousands of actions in the courts and tribunals.
According to the workers' representatives, statements, notifications, summonses, appearances, trials, embargoes, evictions, civil registry proceedings and legal medicine and toxicology institutes have been affected.
The convening unions (CSIF, CCOO, UGT and STAJ) estimate the follow-up of the first day of unemployment at more than 80%.
"We are not going to enter into a war of figures for participation in the strike: the Administration will say that we have been a few, but we know that there has been a very high participation on this first day," they say from CCOO.
The call covers all the general bodies of the Administration of Justice, from those of judicial assistance to procedural processors, procedural and administrative managers.
Many of the functions that are carried out every day by the courts depend on this staff, such as customer service, document registration, notification of proceedings and orders, claims, sanctions, fines or communication with the parties.
The forensic doctors and the physicians of the Institutes of Toxicology, in addition to the rest of the personnel of these organisms, are also summoned to strike.
All are officials of national bodies that organically depend on the central government, although most of the autonomous communities have transferred the management of Justice (all except Castilla la Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Murcia, the Balearic Islands and Ceuta and Melilla).
However, the unions have centralized their claim on two issues that are the direct responsibility of the ministry headed by Pilar Llop: the general complement of the position (a basic remuneration that is set by the General State Budget and that is linked to the functions carried out by the civil servant) and the Law of Organizational Efficiency processed by the Government.
The general complement of the position now oscillates between the 2,421 euros per year that a legal aid official (C2) charges and the 21,848 that a forensic doctor charges.
The unions demand increases of between 350 and 450 euros per month, in line with the agreement reached between the central Executive and the lawyers of the Administration of Justice (the former judicial secretaries) that put an end to two months of indefinite strike by that body.
This pact is in the background of the strike now started by judicial officials, who throughout the conflict with the lawyers opposed the ministry negotiating unilaterally with them, and had warned that if an agreement was reached that would only benefit to that body, the rest would mobilize to demand similar improvements.
Regarding the law on organizational efficiency, the unions demand that employment and remuneration be guaranteed, and that there will be no forced mobility procedures, aspects that, they say, are endangered by the new regulation, which provides for the possibility of entrusting court tasks with a lot of workload to staff from other destinations or to merge the tasks of different courts.
Simultaneously to the three-hour strike (from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.), this Monday concentrations or worker assemblies have been held in the judicial buildings.
For this Wednesday, April 19, the officials are also called for a day of general strike and a demonstration that will start from the Ministry of Justice and for which buses are being chartered for officials from all over Spain to attend.
"The first day of the strike has been a complete success, 85% of the workforce, more than 35,000 officials, has supported the strikes," said Javier Jordán, head of Justice for the CSI-F, the majority union, who has regretted the effects of the strike for the public, but he has blamed the ministry.
“The government has left us no other way out.
The situation of justice is unfortunate, more means are needed and, above all, clarify the functions that officials perform.
From Comisiones Obreras, Luis Calero, general secretary of the Justice Administration sector, has demanded that the ministry sit down to negotiate with the unions, but the department led by Llop has not set, for the moment, a negotiation calendar.