Up to 90 percent of the staff supported in the Assembly that the Local Police of Arrecife held on Tuesday night "not to perform extraordinary services of any kind. We will limit ourselves to doing the ordinary day", stated Juan José de León, local police officer and member of Intersindical Canaria, which means that between seven or eight agents will cover the events, which during this Carnival week, will bring together between 3,000 and 4,000 people. This measure, and others that could be initiated, will not stop until negotiations with the City Council are resumed and they are included in the salary increase because "the 15 percent increase that the Consortium has made to the rest of the civil servants on behalf of the Job Position List belongs to us by right", argued Juan José de León.
They know, however, that they are obliged to perform these extraordinary hours when required, but as their agreement dictates, they have to receive the notice five days in advance. So far, they have not been required in service "in time and form", that is why they have already begun to refuse to work overtime voluntarily, and in principle, they would not be obliged to perform them neither for next Friday, End of the Murgas Contest, nor for Saturday in the Election of the Queen, and for next Monday, with the Grand Parade of Floats, where more than 40 agents were required last year, the extraordinary service would have to be appointed between this Wednesday and Thursday.
In addition, the Local Police expects the Consortium to pronounce on the reposition appeal they filed last January on the 15 percent increase stipulated by the City Council, as they consider it "discriminatory" and on which they have not received a response. For this reason, they do not rule out filing an administrative contentious appeal next week because "they will not allow them to be left out of that salary increase".
Collective agreement
According to union representatives, the collective agreement of civil servant personnel that was signed in 2004 did not contemplate the "special working conditions of this group", so a series of negotiations were initiated, which ended last year, to adapt this agreement to the conditions of the police force, and that according to what was approved in plenary session in April 2006, were outside the Job Position List. Based on this extension of the agreement, the City Council has not contemplated the increase for this group.
But, the last salary increase of 15 percent that the City Council carried out at the end of last year and that is retroactive to January 2006 was made, according to union representatives, on behalf of the RPT. For this reason, the Local Police considers that it is also their right to receive the increase. The mayor of Arrecife, María Isabel Déniz, with whom they recently met, has proposed to postpone the negotiation until after the elections, however, the Local Police is willing to carry out this and other protest measures to get the mayor to sit down to negotiate.
