Madrid (EFE) per month for each employee.
“We all have a bittersweet feeling because to reach this agreement, both arts have had to give up important aspects, but I think it was the right thing to do at this time,” acknowledged Juan José Yáñez, spokesman for the strikers and member of the Union. Progressive Lawyers (UPSJ), one of the three associations calling the strike.
In an almost two-hour meeting with the Secretary General for Innovation and Quality of the Public Justice Service, Manuel Olmedo, and with the Secretary of State for Public Function, Lidia Sánchez Milán, the strike committee has reviewed and defined “until the last comma” of the final document.
Agreement Keys
Through this agreement, whose ‘sine qua non’ condition is the immediate cancellation of the strike, the lawyers give up the claim that they have made their banner during these more than two months of strike, the so-called down payment clause, by which They asked that their salary be referenced to that of judges and prosecutors so as to never charge less than 85% compared to these two legal operators.
In exchange, there will be a gradual increase of between 430 and 450 euros gross per month, depending on the different levels and functions.
This increase will begin to be perceived when the two royal decrees that regulate the remuneration of lawyers are modified, whose publication in the BOE is expected for next July, explained Luis Toribio, also spokesman for the strike committee and vice president of the College National Lawyers (CNLAJ).
Then, civil servants will begin to receive between 172 and 180 euros more per month on their payrolls, 40% of the total increase, which will be applied retroactively from January 2023.
In January 2024, another 40% will be increased, and the remaining 20%, from July of that year.
Thus, the former court clerks will receive between 5,160 and 5,400 euros gross more per year in salaries that, according to Justice, are currently between 40,000 and 60,000 euros per year and were going to grow on average by 14.76 % in three years before the agreement.
The text also does not include another of the lawyers’ requests, which remains “pending”: the reduction of population groups so that officials from small municipalities do not charge less than those of larger ones.
The provincial assemblies of lawyers decided yesterday Monday by a majority (76% of votes in favor) to accept this agreement proposed by the Ministry of Justice, although the strike committee has indicated that it was working on the final document until dawn and Justice sources have confessed that the firm has been in danger until the last moment.
Unions call for widespread increases
After learning the news, the Independent Union and Officials Center (CSIF) and Workers Commissions (CCOO) have demanded that the salary increase be extended to all bodies of the Administration of Justice.
For this, CSIF does not rule out “any measure of pressure” and CCOO already raised Monday to the workers of the sector to start “forceful mobilizations”, including a strike.
Traffic jam in the courts
The latest data provided by the lawyers estimate the impact of the strike at more than 400,000 suspended trials, 480,000 lawsuits pending distribution and 1,500 million euros unemployed in the consignment accounts of the courts.
“It is difficult to know when normality will be reached, because the follow-up has not been the same in all the courts either. Therefore, it will be necessary to see where the action programs that are going to be implemented arrive so that the activity reaches normality. I believe that this year it will be difficult, but we will try”, Toribio has valued.
According to Justice, 20.22% of the lawyers seconded this Monday – the last day with data – the strike, while the conveners place this figure at around 78%.