Madrid, Feb 17 (EFE).- The Ministry of Justice and the lawyers on strike continue trying to negotiate an agreement in the early hours of this Friday that puts an end to the indefinite strike of civil servants in a meeting that now exceeds nine hours.
After two in the morning, the strike committee of the lawyers of the administration of Justice and the ministry, headed at the meeting by the Secretary of State for Justice, Tontxu Rodríguez, have not been able to bring their distanced positions closer, so the officials maintain their call for an indefinite strike.
The meeting began at five in the afternoon, when the representatives of the lawyers entered the headquarters of the ministry surrounded by dozens of colleagues dressed in gowns and banners and cheering the cry of “yes we can.”
Shortly after, Justice has asked to dissolve this concentration to begin the negotiations.
While the meeting was taking place, at the gates of the ministry, several lawyers have commented to the press that they were willing to give in to their requests and have regretted that the ministry is requesting the dissolution of the strike as a requirement for dialogue.
The monitoring of the strike grew this Thursday to 30.25% of the workers according to Justice. The officials, who have not communicated the figures for the day, placed support at 80% on Wednesday and have assured that it has grown in the last day.
Since the strike began on January 24, the lawyers estimate that more than 150,000 trials and hearings have been suspended due to the strike, 20,000 of them in Madrid, and they assure that the judicial consignment account is stopped and that there are 560 million euros pending delivery.
The main demands of the officials are a hook clause to the law on the remuneration of judges and prosecutors to never charge less than 85% with respect to these two legal operators, provided they have the same seniority, and that their salary is not less in small populations.
For its part, Justice maintains that only one of the eleven demands raised by the associations of former court clerks remains to be met – the review of the productivity supplement – and considers their salary requests out of place, when their salaries are going to grow on average 14.76% in three years.