One of the national union demands included by the only Union of Lawyers of Spain, Venia, is the necessary National Legal Statute of the Lawyer and specifically the right to strike of lawyers in general (and particularly in what is called the Public Defender's Office).
While the Legal Profession watches impassively and passively (as almost always) the manifest collapse of the Administration of Justice with part of its civil servants on strike, for some time, as well as the demands of platforms, associations and diverse movements against the Mutual Society of Lawyers (where a large part of the "contributions" of lawyers who are not in Social Security as self-employed), it does not take a lynx to know who can call a strike of the Public Defender's Office. And it is Venia, as a Union of Lawyers, whether they like it or not, finding its fundamental reason precisely in the aforementioned, in its condition as a union.
So that the uninitiated get an idea, the "public shift" is that service to which a citizen goes to obtain a legal orientation service (SOJ) or for the appointment of a solicitor and public defender for such or such judicial matter that he/she wants to raise in court or from which they want to defend themselves when a third party has initiated it.
It is also "public shift" that legal assistance service that is on call when one is arrested for such or such a crime, in order to defend the rights of the detainee. However, the citizen rarely asks "how much do they pay" the public defender for such or such assistance to the detainee or assigned shift.
Well, I answer: at a miserable price, completely uncorrelated with the time, effort and work done and also with unjustifiable differences according to the territory we are talking about, causing enormous comparative grievances, intolerable, for that intentional asymmetry (read inequality). And so, let them ask the Basque lawyers who have the highest scale in Spain and the Andalusian lawyers who have the lowest scale in the same nation, Spain.
Therefore, and despite the criticisms of some of those platforms, associations and movements of the Legal Profession towards Venia, whose ultimate reason for being lies in envy (which is so Spanish and human at the same time), Venia, and starting with Galicia, has called a strike of the Public Defender's Office for July 12, precisely the day of celebration, the Day of Free Justice and with the minimum services provided by the Administration, in order to recognize, among others, the right to sick leave and maternity leave, labor contributions, family reconciliation, the increase of remunerations, as well as the recognition of all their actions and the punctual payment of guards and assigned public shifts.
Do not forget that the Public Defender's Office is an outsourcing of a public service at a low cost for the Administration, made up of lawyers attached to it (today massively before the decreasing number of private matters that are eternalized, without solution, by the successive strikes of the Admon of Juticia) and that ultimately, we are "functionalized" and subjected to the power of direction of the Administration, being this, through the bar associations who assigns us the clients, the working hours and the remunerations (that euphemistically in the applicable law calls "indemnifications"). From the above, it is accredited that we are subordinated to the decision-making power of the Administration, being legal operators of the same rank as the judges, the lawyers of the Administration of Justice and the rest of the civil servants.
Well, if the Public Defender's Office operates under those criteria of the Administration, this inevitably entails the recognition of labor rights as the rest of the civil servants of the Administration of Justice have, and among others, the right to strike. And we have started by calling a strike in Galicia. And also, with the possibility of expansion to the rest of the Spanish territory.
The moment has come for the inevitable positivization of the Rights of the Lawyer, with capital letters and particularly of the Public Defender's Office, even when the Administration, in addition, must undertake a profound reform of the collapsed, ineffective, inefficient, incompetent (in its vulgar sense) and useless Administration of Justice implementing the AI (artificial intelligence) to replace all those tasks that do not provide any value, which are the vast majority and at a very high economic cost for Spain. But that's for another article.
