Some 1,600 public prosecutors and lawyers in the Region of Murcia are going on indefinite strike starting today

Among the battery of improvements, they demand an increase in salary compensation, family and work conciliation measures, digital disconnection, a dignified retirement and the review of scales that, they say, lead to payments well below the market.

«The remuneration is minimal, 20 euros for an entry and registration of eleven hours of work; “There is no payment for availability on on-call days and, in addition, we get paid after 4 or 6 months,” they denounce from Venia, the union calling for the strike. Seven months ago in Madrid they announced the total strike that this Tuesday will be supported by some 1,600 lawyers (of the 2,000 registered in the Region) and around 400 attorneys on duty, according to the figures managed in the Region by the union.

The indefinite strike will seriously affect the already collapsed administration of Justice. Not in vain, every day about 1,200 matters from the civil, social, administrative and criminal containment jurisdictions pass through the hands of the free justice lawyers, including gender and military violence in Cartagena.

“Although we are going to comply with the minimum services, that is, those in which it fundamentally affects the client’s rights to freedom,” clarifies Fermín Martínez, regional coordinator of Venia. From the Venia union they point out that during the indefinite strike the guards for assistance to detainees, gender violence and immigration will continue to be attended to; oral trials or any other action with a prisoner; matters relating to the right to strike, protection of fundamental rights and minors or people with judicially modified capacity.

No response from the Ministry

Last September, the union asked the Ministry of Justice to establish a working group between these two parties and in which the autonomous communities with transferred powers in matters of Justice would participate, in order to start a dialogue on some of our national demands.

«To date, the Ministry has not only remained silent in response, but has announced a miserable 5% increase in the scales of the official shift. There is no other way out than calling a national and indefinite strike,” they announced in a statement from Venia. In this sense, Martínez denies that the Ministry of Justice has rejected the right to exercise unemployment in the provision of free legal assistance service.

Specifically, it refers to a letter sent last Friday to the General Council of the Legal Profession, which considers that lawyers and attorneys on duty “do not have an employment, statutory or official relationship with the Ministry of Justice, therefore, “In the event that they suspend the exercise of their free legal assistance functions, such cessation would not be covered by any right to strike and would entail the appropriate disciplinary consequences from the respective professional associations,” the document states.

«This is a mere letter sent by the office of the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Labor, indicating that according to them we do not have protection in the right to strike. At this time, we have not received any official notification in a timely manner that we are being denied the right to strike.