If professionals in the world of Justice are asked these days about their day-to-day work in those offices, the response has rarely been so unanimous among all the cogs of that judicial machinery, today at low hours and with serious breakdowns. Lack of means, overload of work, assignments of tasks that do not touch, obsolete computer programs, abandonment of the rulers, low salaries, poor organization...
It does not matter if you talk to officials at the basic level, as if you are interviewing a judge, asking a prosecutor, consulting a court clerk, or asking for an opinion from a lawyer on duty. The answers are repeated.
From what they explain, it can be presumed that they have little time left to get bored, but a lot to worry about. The work overload is extraordinary. The figures back it up.
The entry of issues per year in an office marked by what is known as a "module" is 1,200. In the courts of Lleida, reveals the CSIF, that figure multiplied last year. 2,500 entered. And that year it is predicted that there will be 3,000. Madrid or Malaga, to name other cities, suffer from the same situation.
And the most worrying thing is that these professionals do not see a solution to the problem. They agree that a decisive change of direction must be given now from the political power.
We are talking about a public service, which splashes millions of citizens and it is not acceptable that you have to wait years – that each one puts in the time they want and they will not be wrong – for a judicial resolution.
Officials who depend on different organizations live in the same office. A gibberish that explains the unprecedented reality of a Ministry of Justice: today, a tinderbox of protests with two strikes (secretaries and civil servants) and the announcement of a third indefinite strike of judges and prosecutors on May 16. To which must be added the protest of the public defenders. All in just 4 months.
La Vanguardia has spoken with these actors to draw an X-ray, as faithful as possible, of their day to day. Surprising revelations such as that of the officials, who claim to carry out exclusive tasks of judges and secretaries. That is breaking the law. Or reflections of prosecutors and judges, "distressed" by not having hands to give way to all the issues that come to them. All with computer programs from 25 years ago.
The future that awaits these offices, where they work with limited material and human resources, and sometimes obsolete, is discouraging. “The system will collapse and then we will collapse, affirms magistrate María José Rivas Velasco.
And he recounts his day to day. “In the morning, hearings, appeals, processing doubts are held and in the afternoon, we sentence. The day becomes a tetris of organization, to optimize time, but since it is limited, there are no working hours, because despite working mornings and afternoons, weekends also end up being work time to give outlet to everything that enters".
The same thing happens on a day-to-day basis in prosecutors' offices. "It is especially annoying that the computer systems through which most of these tasks have to be carried out can be greatly improved, which sometimes means waiting, repetition or errors, which unnecessarily complicate the work," says the Prosecutor, Salvador Viada.
And he adds: “There is always – and I mean always – work to do at home, and sometimes on weekends or vacations. There is more work than can be dispatched during working hours, which has repercussions on citizens.
Since the epidemic, teleworking has gained space, although presence in the Prosecutor's Office is still necessary a good number of days a week. The pressure endured is very high ”.
The officials repeat the same speech. "We stay in the offices, out of responsibility, beyond the working day, being very aware that in many of the issues we deal with we cannot allow ourselves any slip-up or oversight." say from the CSIF union.
“There are procedures – they add – that must be kept up to date, despite the burden that this entails (restraining orders, entry and exit from prison, delivery of orders for food…). All this without receiving anything in return and knowing that overtime is not included in our regulations”.
In Spain (as of January 1, 2023) there are 5,343 judges and magistrates. The majority (3,003) are women. The average age, 52.3 years. In the 61 to 70 age range, men almost double the number of women. They are majority between the ages of 20 and 40.
This staff of judges and judges is now called by the conservative associations to an indefinite strike for May 16. They ask, like the rest of the justice actors, for more salary, but also means to relieve them of work.
“Since 2006, we have been calling for the regulation of the workload to protect our health,” says María José Rivas Velasco, a member of the Executive Committee of the Professional Association of the Magistracy.
The administrations should not be surprised by this request, Rivas points out, "because in 2018 a report on psychosocial risks of the judicial career was already prepared at the request of the CGPJ" The conclusion? "The workload was identified as a very high health risk factor for 84% of professionals."
Rivas criticizes that no measure has been adopted to alleviate the situation, which increases the risk to health. "The work overload regularly reaches 240-260% in many courts."
The judges and magistrates do not ask for anything other than "compliance with Law 15/2003 that fixes salary reviews every 5 years." The last call was in 2003. "We are the only body of the State that, after the 2010 cut (9.73% in the fixed and almost 5% in complements) has assumed another so large compared to other officials."
They require a limitation of the maximum workload. The ratio is 11.5 judges per 100,000 inhabitants. In Europe, 21. “It is for occupational health. Nobody wants to have their case resolved by an overloaded judge, just as they would not want an exhausted surgeon to operate on them,” says Rivas.
And he wonders: "How can a single judge resolve 2,653 issues per year?" The salary? "In 2003 a judge charged 7 times the SMI today that proportion does not reach 3". The salary, on average, is around 52,000 euros gross. Monthly salaries range from 2,000 to 5,000 euros.
There are just over 2,600 prosecutors. It is a pyramidal structure as it is a hierarchical career. The ratio of prosecutors per 100,000 inhabitants in Spain is around 5.5; in Europe the average, based on that population, is 11.
The first conclusion is obvious. Our country has half the number of prosecutors, for a similar workload, than its European neighbours. The objective workload assumed by prosecutors is therefore “very high,” says Salvador Viada, president of the Independent Professional Association of Prosecutors, one of the signatories to the May 16 strike threat document. .
Viada affirms that "this excessive workload" due to lack of personnel (the substitutions or secondments applied by Justice are ineffective) "has no limits." Everything that enters a prosecutor's office "has to come out, yes or yes," he adds.
And if the deadlines are not met or chaos takes over the office “the threat of a sanction is always there, since nobody has bothered to set limits on a volume of unaffordable tasks. And that takes its toll both physically and psychologically ”, criticizes Viada.
The staff of prosecutors is now covered (70 new positions have just been created) but that, far from being a gift, is, for this group, "another serious deficiency." Mobility is practically impossible. “Many prosecutors work for years away from their families and moving up through the ranks is almost impossible,” reveals Salvador Viada.
What added to "an excessive workload" gradually undermines these professionals. The fact that the State Attorney General is chosen by the Government also limits many careers among this group, "since the ideological affinity of the candidates prevails in many promotions."
Many prosecutors, very valid, will never prosper. Viada is clear about it: "The Prosecutor's Office must be depoliticized, for citizens and also for prosecutors."
And the salaries? A prosecutor who enters the race after passing the opposition (5 years of study) charges between 2,700 and 2,800 euros per month. In high courts or special prosecutors, that salary can be close to 5,000.
Justice officials, among other things, request –following the path opened by court clerks– “professional and remuneration recognition” of functions carried out in these offices, which they claim to carry out without having officially assigned those tasks.
So with this strike they demand, among other things, "that this reality be reflected in an official document and that we be paid for it," claims the CSIF.
The functions of these public employees (45,000) are included in the Organic Law of the Judiciary. Something easy to check. But the endemic collapse dragged out in those offices has caused –in a desperate strategy to row all together– that these workers are forced to assume functions “with greater responsibility than those entrusted to them”. Procedures “of great importance for the citizen – they admit – that we carry out without the presence of the judge or the administration's lawyer”.
Or put another way; if that is so, those offices would be breaking the law. "Officials are taking statements from those investigated, something that would have to be done before a judge and in the presence of a lawyer, who attests to what is being said."
There is more. They also take statements from witnesses, without a judge or secretary, they read rights or direct acts of conciliation. This is not ending here. Granting of powers, appearance to ratify the divorce regulatory agreement, consent and assent in adoption, act of acceptance of the position of guardian...
"We could break down many other tasks carried out by and before the official responsible for the file, without the intervention of a lawyer and/or magistrate," says this union. "If we are able to perform them, we think it would be very important to legally assign us those functions and pay for them."
The salary? 923 euros, aid and 1,238 euros managers. There is a complement per position of 200 euros and others that apply the autonomies. The latter causes an official to charge 400 euros more per month than another for the same job, depending on where he lives.
Few strikes have been charged in this country, with so few protesters, a bill as expensive as the one paid by the citizens for the indefinite strike of the lawyers (former judicial secretaries) of the administration of justice.
There are only 4,000 in all of Spain and their three-month strike caused real chaos in the judicial offices, with the suspension of tens of thousands of trials and proceedings.
This is explained by the key role played by these lawyers in the machinery of the legal machinery. Some already define them – after this strike – as “the air traffic controllers” of the courts. And they are right. If those secretaries stop, it has been shown that judicial activity is blocked.
The infinity of powers assigned to these judicial actors was precisely what caused this historic strike. The administration, they denounced, had assigned them up to 400 new tasks in recent years with the promise that the assumption of these new responsibilities would be accompanied by a salary increase.
But the years passed and those lawyers, who did comply with the assigned orders, were left without the promised economic compensation when the Ministry of Finance entered the fray. The excuse? There was no money in the budgets to assume that commitment, sealed by those lawyers with the Ministry of Justice.
After a strike of more than three months and in view of the accumulation of cases in the paralyzed courts, Justice yielded to part of the claims of this group and promised these officials an increase of up to 450 euros in their monthly payroll progressively in the next years.
The judicial secretaries returned to their posts and now they are working on the preparation of a shock plan to oxygenate the collapse caused in those offices by this strike.
Legal sources point out that it will take at least two years to cure that hangover. And that's without adding the new bill that citizens are going to pay for the civil servants' strike or the collapse that is predicted if judges and prosecutors also go on strike.
The gross salary of these professionals ranges between 37,697 euros and 57,722. The average would be around 42,000. euro.
In 2021, a total of 43,696 lawyers on the Public Defender attended 1,923,183 legal matters, 20.2% more than in 2020. It is the activity of lawyers who work for very low wages and, most of them of times, late in payments.
Putting a salary to these essential and necessary actors to assist citizens without resources is practically impossible. If it can be affirmed, as revealed by Alicia Vega, president of the Spanish Confederation of Public Lawyers, that most months "we do not even take out to pay the rent of our offices."
Various calculations agree that these lawyers earn, on average, around 22,000 euros a year. And they earn that amount penny by penny. For an ordinary matter, they enter, on average, 320 euros.
But you have to think that this is a job that in the worst case can last for two years. If they were charged by the hour, in those matters that take forever "sixty minutes of work can cost less than 50 cents," says Alicia Vega.
The great "bargain" for these public defenders is a speedy trial. If things go smoothly, they are, at most, two days of work. And they are paid 264 euros for each cause.
If it is a family trial, which can be complicated for months, the scale (always start from an average, since the rates vary by autonomy) is 270 euros. But if the cause is about guardianship or custody, which can also complicate, that fee is 140 euros.
Knowing this reality, it is not surprising that these professionals protest their working conditions. And this, says Vega, is valid for all lawyers, since we also ask for "dignified and respectful treatment in the courts, to be able to reconcile (if one of our relatives is ill, the hearing is suspended) or the right to disconnect, since we cannot be aware at all hours of whether or not a summons arrives”.
And with their rates frozen for years, they ask that Justice assume the payment if, as often happens, it is ruled that the client who began to be assisted by free justice ends up not having that right. When that happens, the lawyer has to seek his life to collect from the one who was defended from him.
