After almost four decades of being governed by a “provisional” regulation, the Police Council will be subject to review after the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid admitted a lawsuit for processing due to “serious structural anomalies” in its operation. Thus, it will be the first time in 38 years that the body in charge of negotiating working conditions of the National Police.
The architect of this lawsuit, admitted for processing by the Contentious-Administrative Chamber, is the Equiparación Ya (EYA) union, which has already warned in the past that these “serious anomalies” were turning the Police Council into “a merely formal body, without real capacity for negotiation or effective resolution of labor conflicts“. Furthermore, its regulations, which were approved provisionally in 1987, must be replaced by a permanent one within a period of one monthas established by Organic Law 2/1986 on Security Forces and Corps.
In its letter, this union points out that union representatives do not have real decision-making capacity in the Police Council, despite having been designed as a joint body. “When no agreement is reached between the parties, the regulation establishes that the matter is raised to the competent body of the Administration, which causes the final decision rests unilaterally with the Government“, they denounce. Not to mention that the Presidency of the Council corresponds to the Ministry of the Interior itself, which “converts the body into a space where The Administration acts as judge and party in labor disputes“.
Marlaska’s “Right of Veto”
And if this were not enough, the regulations themselves establish a system that makes the text “practically irreformable”since it requires not only the absolute majority of the Council but also subsequent approval from the Administration. In this sense, being a joint body, it is enough for the Administration to vote against to block any modification. That is to say, the Ministry of the Interior, headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has in practice “a structural right of veto“.
There are many non-compliances, given the passivity and lack of responses from those most responsible. The first directly affects the convocation of the Council itself: although the regulations establish that the Plenary Session must meet once every two months, at least, Since 2019, only six ordinary and three extraordinary plenary sessions have been held. And the same happens with the commissions, where the irregularities become even more serious.
According to the EYA union in its letter, the Economic Affairs Commission, created in 1996 to deal with remuneration issues, has never been summonedwhile the Personnel Commission maintains a composition based on agreements from almost thirty years ago, including unions and positions that no longer exist.
In addition, the agents also denounce the holding of meetings without respecting the minimum quorum required by the regulationswhich could “compromise the validity of the decisions taken.” At this point, they emphasize that the 22 collective conflicts raised since 1987 have always been resolved “without favorable results for the police”, another example of the “failure” of the current mediation model.
Without equalization or dignified retirement
In its lawsuit, Equiparación Ya also denounces the “strong disproportion” in union representation by scale. Thus, they point out that there are occasions in which a member is elected with only 246 votes in the Superior Scale, while in the Basic Scale more than 3,000 votes have been needed. This situation causes representatives elected “with minimum percentages of the police census” participate in decisions that affect more than 71,000 agents.
“There have been too many years of silence before a body where, despite the appearance of negotiation, decisions always end up depending exclusively on the Administration,” the union points out. “It is not surprising that the Extraordinary pay for national police officers has continued to be cut since 2009. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. And we also understand why the State Security Forces and Corps still do not have a retirement on par with the regional and local police forces or why there is still no such thing. remuneration law that guarantees true salary equalization“, they denounce from EYA.
In short, they emphasize that “in the Police Council the unions have no capacity to make decisions or real influence: Your vote is simply not worth it.“. And it is for this reason that they have resorted to the only two means of pressure to obtain changes: the paralysis of the functioning of the Council through the absence of a quorum, which would prevent the issuance of mandatory reports necessary for certain regulations and would allow judicially challenging decisions adopted without complying with the regulations. Mechanism known as permanent or indefinite collective conflict.
Since the union had already declared a permanent collective dispute, it now resorts to the second option, the judicial challenge of the regulation itself. Its objective is to achieve its repeal and the approval of a new regulatory framework that guarantees real and effective union participation in decision making.