Justice summons the strike committee of the Lawyers to a meeting on Friday: "We have to lower our tone"

The meeting will take place one month after the break, which began on January 24

MADRID, 21 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Ministry of Justice has convened the strike committee of the Lawyers of the Administration of Justice (LAJ) to a meeting on Friday to address the collective conflict that they have been holding for months and for which the indefinite strike that began on the 24th of January in search of salary improvements that compensate for the increased workload.

"We have convened the strike committee for next Friday, the 24th, to continue bringing positions closer. We have to lower our tone and exercise prudence, an exercise in respect for the other party to the negotiation," the president said on Tuesday. General Secretary for Innovation and Quality of the Public Justice Service, Manuel Olmedo, in statements to TVE collected by Europa Press.

As specified by the strike committee in a statement, the meeting will take place from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at the headquarters of the Ministry directed by Pilar Llop. "We fully trust that this next meeting will open the doors to the prompt resolution of the difficulties in complying with the agreements reached in April 2022," the lawyers have pointed out.

This is the second meeting that the Ministry and the LAJ will hold after almost a month of indefinite strike by the lawyers which, according to the calculations of the organizing associations, has led to the suspension of 152,000 views and the blocking of 560 million euros. .

The meeting set for Friday, February 24, will take place a week after both parties sat down at the table and got up -- after more than 15 hours -- without an agreement and with mutual reproaches between the parties for maintaining immovable positions.

After that first meeting, the Secretary of State for Justice, Antonio 'Tontxu' Rodríguez, assured that the lawyers, far from sitting down with an open attitude, raised "their demands with respect to the initials and without proposing alternatives, also using unintelligible bellicose language in these time".

However, the spokesman for the strike committee, Juan José Yáñez, at the end of the meeting told the media that despite the fact that the minister, Pilar Llop, spoke that she wanted to open an honest dialogue, in the hours that have passed sitting face to face "there was no dialogue, nor was there honesty".

Early this Tuesday, the LAJ strike committee called a press conference for tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. in the Courts of Plaza de Castilla, in Madrid, to "report the current situation and the commitments made by the Ministry of Justice and by Pilar Llop last April". Said call was announced before Olmedo said publicly that a new meeting was scheduled.

The indefinite strike reaches its day number 21 as a result of the conflict that has its origin in "the lack of salary adjustment 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".

The Secretary of State for Justice has repeatedly said that it is a "political" strike that is out of place. After the first meeting with the strike committee, he recalled that they are not workers "who want to make ends meet" but rather "privileged people" who earn between 40,000 and 60,000 euros. He also recalled that they had a 14% salary increase this year.