The strike committee of the Lawyers of Justice and the Ministry meet this Monday to continue the negotiation

It is the third time that they have sat down at the table to try to unblock the conflict that maintains the indefinite strike

MADRID, 26 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Lawyers of the Administration of Justice (LAJ) and the Ministry directed by Pilar Llop will meet tomorrow, Monday, for the third time, to try to unblock the conflict that maintains the indefinite strike that civil servants began on January 24 in search of salary improvements. that compensate the workload assumed in the last decade.

This Monday will be the third meeting held by both parties after a month of indefinite strike by the lawyers which, according to the calculations of the organizing associations, has meant the suspension of 210,000 views and the blocking of "almost 800 million euros " .

Since the strike began, the LAJ and the Ministry have met twice. The first took place on Thursday, February 16; that time they spent more than 15 hours at the headquarters of the Ministry and ended without an agreement and with mutual reproaches between the parties for maintaining immovable positions. The second meeting was last Friday, and although that time they also sat down and got up from the table without agreement --and within the hour and a half they had planned-- they managed to set the appointment for this Monday on the calendar to continue with the negotiation.

The third meeting will take place at 4:00 p.m. at the Ministry's headquarters located at number 21, Calle de San Bernardo in Madrid. No departure time has been set for this meeting.

At the end of the second meeting, the vice president of the Illustrious National College of Lawyers and member of the strike committee, Luis Toribio, positively assessed the meeting, but specified that the positions between the LAJ and the Ministry were still far apart and that, therefore, they would continue with the stop. "We have considered that given the paper that has been transferred to us, it is not possible to call off the strike yet," he said in statements to the press.

As he explained, at the meeting on Friday the Ministry - with General Secretary Manuel Olmedo at the helm - sent them a document that, "in a preliminary assessment", the strike committee considered that it could "be used to start the negotiation ".

In line, Toribio indicated that in this preliminary examination what they did verify was that the positions were "quite far apart." "Therefore, the negotiation has only just begun," he added without elaborating on the content of the ministry's proposal. "Until an agreement is reached, it will not be the moment to talk about the contents," he added.

That same Friday, the Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, assured a press conference in Asturias that the dialogue at the meeting held in Madrid had been "constructive" and "in good tone". According to her, she said, she believed that in future meetings both parties would be "able to find common ground", although she did not specify if she would be present at the meeting on Monday.

Asked about the demands of the strike committee, Llop highlighted the measures adopted by the Ministry to improve the salary conditions of the LAJ. In line, she acknowledged that the lawyers are "essential workers" of the Administration, but insisted that "justice is not paralyzed", because it currently "continues to work" with some specific stoppages due to the strike. In addition, she recalled the request that she had already made to the lawyers on previous occasions: "Do not take maximalist positions."

The conflict has its origin in "the lack of salary adequacy 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".

In these four weeks, the convening associations --the Progressive Union of LAJ (UPSJ), the Independent Association of Lawyers (AinLAJ) and the Illustrious College of LAJ-- have registered a participation of between 85% and 73%, while that the Ministry has observed between 33.92% and 18.9% follow-up.