“An analysis of the impact of the conflict that facilitates the action for the recovery of the ordinary activity of the judicial office and the centers of destination”. Or, in other words, so that it is understood: a shock plan with extra budget allocation to restore normality to the courts as soon as possible.
It is one of the points of the agreement between the Ministry of Justice and the lawyers of the administration of justice after the end of the historic strike led by the former judicial secretaries.
Lawyers from the administration of justice, judges, prosecutors and lawyers agree on one thing: “Without a well-studied and structured shock plan, the collapse caused by the stoppage in these offices will not be resolved.” And they also share: “This will not be a matter of two months, which is how long the strike has lasted. To return to the point where it was before the shutdown began, it will take at least an extra year of work.”
The two parties in litigation are given a margin of three months, reads the agreement that was signed on Tuesday, to design this shock plan, for the moment without specific actions. But from the judicial world voices are already beginning to be heard with some proposals, such as paying overtime to civil servants, scheduling trials in the afternoons, reinforcing the teams with more staff, dosing the notifications so as not to collapse the offices even more or set priorities in the payment of the month of one billion euros blocked in the accounts of the courts.
Many higher courts of justice have been preparing measures for weeks to alleviate the consequences of the strike as soon as possible. Some of these offices are designing, for example, new rules in the notification processes so that the deadlines do not run. Now, the worst thing that could happen to them is to receive an avalanche of notifications, which would add to the accumulated unresolved during these two months of strike.
Another priority in these courts that have already put a thread on the needle is to release pending payments as a matter of urgency, with special attention to those that refer to social or commercial processes. An effort will also have to be made to guarantee the celebration of all the views indicated and it will be necessary to pay attention to possible suspensions to cancel them with enough time and thus be able to indicate other views in these holes in the agenda.
The lawyers have not hidden, while the protest has lasted, the expensive bill that this strike could collect among the citizens for each day of stoppage. Hence their strangeness, which they have not hidden either, due to the delay of the Ministry of Justice in attending to their claims. During these two months, around 400,000 trials have been suspended and up to 1.5 billion euros have been blocked in court accounts.
“These figures would not have been reached – in offices already saturated with work – if Justice had reacted earlier”, criticize the organizers of the strike. Now, with the planned shock plan, the Government will have to face – in addition to the increase of up to 450 gross euros promised in the monthly payroll of these lawyers – “a new budget item”, predict these sources. It will be seen how this plan is designed, although for some legal operators it is still shocking that these secretaries, protagonists of this situation, will in the future, with their office colleagues, cover the overtime resulting from the collapse
The Ministry of Justice and the communities that have transferred powers in this field will have to mark the way forward in the coming days. As for the suspended trials, most have been rescheduled for several months, so on this front the harm caused to citizens is already irreparable. And in the first week of April, the impact of this strike will be known, with real numbers, with the judicial activity statistics for the first three months of the year, which all courts must present.