More than two hundred bailiffs gathered today in Porto and Lisbon wearing black T-shirts that read “Justice for those who work in it”, to demand better working conditions and a pay rise.
It was amidst whistles, vuvuzelas, black and white banners reading “Justice for those who work in it”, and the distribution of leaflets with the demands of bailiffs in Portugal that more than a hundred bailiffs gathered this afternoon in front of the Porto Court of Appeal, under the gaze of half a dozen police officers positioned next to the building.
In Lisbon, in front of the Assembly of the Republic, around 100 bailiffs gathered wearing the same black T-shirts with the same slogan: “Justice for those who work in it”.
“We’re back to demanding better working conditions,” said José Carlos Silva, from the Penafiel Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DIAP), and one of the spokespeople for the citizens’ movement, which brought together another 100 judicial officers from the northern region this afternoon in Porto.
The bailiff of Penafiel’s DIAP assumes that justice in Portugal is a pillar that is “falling apart at the seams”, with courts breaking down, namely in “Cascais and Sintra”, but also in the districts of Leiria and Coimbra, due to a “lack of staff”.
“In the past year, 200 bailiffs have been hired and 74 have already withdrawn from the competition. A lot of this is due to the meager salary that a bailiff earns, very close to the minimum wage, where they are placed 300 or 400 kilometers from their home, where there are no allowances (…), especially housing, which we know is very expensive. And a salary close to the minimum wage doesn’t support those conditions. That’s why [there were] 74 dropouts,” explained José Carlos Silva, estimating that more workers could quit by the end of this year.
Studies indicate that there is a shortage of 1,800 civil servants in Portugal, a figure that is “much higher” than the 1,000 expected in 2023, the bailiff said.
In Lisbon, slogans such as “bailiffs in struggle”, “justice doesn’t exist without us” or “we want our supplement” were heard, the national anthem was sung and the flag of Portugal was raised.
Olga Ramos, a worker at the Palace of Justice in Lisbon, is taking part in the demonstration because she “wants to see her career better considered”, with better salaries and better physical working conditions in the courts.
She said that there are many colleagues who deal with violent defendants on a daily basis, such as in the central criminal investigation courts, the family courts or the external and execution services, and who have no training in how to defend themselves against attacks.
On whether there are any proposals she likes in the electoral programs, Olga Ramos said that the parties don’t want to touch the important things.
The president of the Union of Bailiffs, Carlos Almeida, said that the programs of the PS and the AD (coalition led by the PSD, with CDS-PP and PPM), talk about valuing the profession, but without going “further and to the essential”.
Regarding the union’s adherence to the extra-union movement, Carlos Almeida said that the Union of Bailiffs (SOJ) had decided to do so because it was a movement with an “explicit face and demands”.
“I don’t think it’s an inorganic movement, it’s a citizens’ movement.”
Speaking into a megaphone, justice official Nelson Portinha said that the class must unite more at a time when justice is being attacked for delays, when it is in parliament that delays are allowed to occur by not making adequate laws and allowing the police and courts to lack resources.
“Cut the excuses, cut the bullshit, justice doesn’t move faster because you don’t want it to,” he said, addressing the politicians.
The bailiff of Penafiel advocates a reform of the statutes, because bailiffs carry out “thousands of acts” every day that don’t even fall within their competence.
“We do inquiries, we do interrogations, we set up defendants, we do seizures. We carry out acts for level III officials and here our guardianship doesn’t take this into account,” because “it doesn’t want to assign functional complexity to all officials, it only wants to assign it to those who have a degree” and “they forget the officials who have been [working] for 15, 20, 25 years and have been carrying out these diligences for many years.”
An index of demands states that they are calling for a “salary review”, “integration of the procedural recovery supplement (10%) in their salary”, “attribution of functional complexity level III to all bailiffs”, “better working conditions”, “hiring of at least 1,000 bailiffs”, “special retirement scheme and access to the pre-retirement scheme”, “payment of overtime and attribution of a supplement for the duty of permanent availability” and “attribution of a risk allowance”.
Bailiffs also staged protests today in Ponta Delgada (Azores), Funchal (Madeira) and Faro.
