The representatives of the judicial and fiscal career will meet again tomorrow Monday with the Government to advance in the established negotiation with the objective of achieving salary improvements for the togados. On the horizon, the indefinite strike called for the next day 16 that the groups of judges and prosecutors have decided to maintain after hearing the first offer that the ministries of Justice and Finance have put on the table: a game of 44.5 million euros to improve their salaries.
According to legal sources reported to EL MUNDO, the offer made by the Executive has not convinced the representatives of judges and prosecutors, who consider that a “mere linear increase” in salary does not solve the structural deficiencies of Justice or the loss of purchasing power suffered since 2010.
In the meeting held last week, the representative of the Ministry of Finance -in this case the Secretary of State for Public Function, Lidia Sánchez-, stated that up to 44.5 million euros could be allocated to salary improvements, with the benefit of those single-person bodies than collegiate bodies in the plan designed by the Government.
After studying the offer, judges and prosecutors maintain that the salary increase would translate into an improvement of approximately 6% of salary; proposal that they describe as “insufficient”. From the judicial and prosecutorial career, emphasis is placed on the fact that since 2003 they have not had any salary increase and, instead, a drastic cut like the one suffered in 2010 with the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Not surprisingly, the togados defend that they have been suffering a loss of purchasing power of around 20% or 22% in recent years.
Hence, one of the main claims that will be placed tomorrow on the Remuneration Table – the body legally established to negotiate land improvements for members of the magistracy and the Prosecutor’s Office except in the positions of Supreme Court magistrates and public prosecutors Sala- either that the remuneration of the guards be improved, as well as the remuneration of the trienniums. In addition, the judges seek to collect the supplement contemplated in the Organic Law of the Judiciary after the reform carried out in 2018 and which has never been paid.
For the togados, the salaries of the guards are especially bloody, which are usually paid from 0.47 to 3.12 euros gross per hour, reaching 0.38 euros per hour in the case of single-person bodies that are mixed courts unique in our country. In the case of the trienniums, these groups denounce that there is an inequality, since they assure that they are not being remunerated according to the rest of the officials of the State Administration.
Given the lack of personal and material means, and the critical situation that the Administration of Justice is going through, two weeks ago the togados announced a call for an indefinite strike starting on the 16th, after the Ministry of Justice decided last month to October to call off the so-called Remuneration Table, three days after having set it to be held, on the grounds that the Ministry of Finance had ruled out that a salary increase could be agreed at that time.
On the other hand, a determining factor in resorting to this drastic measure was the fact that, months after the revocation of the Compensation Board, the lawyers of the Administration of Justice, who participated last February in an indefinite strike that led to the suspension of some 356,000 trials and hearings in our country, achieved with that strike that the Government raised their wages up to 450 euros.
The meeting scheduled tomorrow at 11:30 am will be attended by representatives of the Ministries of Justice and Finance, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), the State Attorney General’s Office and the associations of judges – the Professional Association of the Magistracy, the Francisco de Vitoria Association, the Judges Association for Democracy and the Independent Judicial Forum-, as well as members of the prosecutors’ collectives, such as the Association of Prosecutors, the Progressive Union of Prosecutors and the Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors.
In recent days, all the associations of judges and prosecutors have been analyzing both separately and jointly the proposal that the Government gave them last Wednesday with the intention of counteracting it at the imminent meeting.
Andalusia is once again at the forefront of litigation in Spain, after the Canary Islands. During 2022, the number of new cases that reached the Andalusian courts increased by 4%, which entered 1,254,304 cases compared to 1,203,452 last year, according to data from the latest report of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia ( TSJA).
The Andalusian litigation rate is 6% higher than the state average. If in the State as a whole it has been 140 cases per 1,000 inhabitants during 2022, within the scope of the TSJA said rate is 149 cases, the second highest in Spain.
With such numbers and with a growing judicial gridlock that could be aggravated by the announced strikes, the president of the TSJA, Lorenzo del Río, is forced to repeat the same warnings every year. “We do not want to preach in the desert, but the situation described should, once again, be an opportunity for the parliamentary groups to agree on a great State pact for Justice.” Otherwise, Del Río warns, “one day, Justice will collapse.”
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