Gragera will raise the salary of all employees to justify the increase in the Police

There are no data, figures or numbers. The mayor, Ignacio Gragera, refuses to explain to the city how much the salary increase agreed with the Local Police will cost to settle the conflict that threatened to leave the fair without all the reinforcements it needed.

That pact, known on Wednesday through the majority union of the Police, Aspolobba, had generated misgivings in the majority union of the City Council, CSIF, and in the rest of municipal employees. For this reason, the mayor met this Thursday with representatives of CSIF and has agreed to open negotiations to increase the income of all municipal employees.

The Badajoz City Council has 1,320 employees, including workers and civil servants, of which 225 correspond to the Local Police service. The rest, 1,100, will be favored in the event that the negotiations come to fruition.

The mayor gave a press conference together with the Local Police Councillor, María José Solana, and the president of Aspolobba, Manuel Manzano, after signing the agreement this morning. However, he has not wanted to explain the figures of the pact because he first wants to take it to a general negotiating table of civil servants where the rest of the unions with delegates in the City Council are represented. This will take place on Wednesday. Then another union representation table should be held in which Aspolobba is not present.

In both, he hopes to collect the approval of the rest of the union formations to start the administrative file with which he will expand the allocation destined to pay salaries. He hopes to approve this budget modification in a plenary session in July.

The salary increase of the rest of the municipal employees will have to wait longer because the talks have only begun, they have to reach a meeting point and, later, convene all the unions again. Subsequently, process the administrative file to once again increase the item to pay the employees in plenary session.

The City Council had planned in the budgets 42.2 million euros for payroll, of which 12 are allocated to the Local Police. It must be taken into account that Badajoz has privatized important services, such as public transport, cleaning and garbage collection or the water networks to which it either pays an annual fee directly or balances the accounts through the deficit that they present. . In other words, the payrolls of these workers are not included in the 42 million euros.

Among these workers are the bus drivers, who have announced a night strike starting tomorrow, Friday, which will affect the connection between the center and the Caya fair. The City Council yesterday sent a proposal for minimum services of 30%, which has been rejected by the unions. The mayor will sign another tomorrow, although he has not said what percentage. Gragera has once again asked the drivers and attendees of the fair for patience in anticipation of traffic jams and problems. Although now they will have enough policemen, the lack of drivers will affect circulation.

Video and sentence

The mayor, Ignacio Gragera, did not want to assess the sentence that rejects the payment of 251,000 euros in overtime to the Superintendent of Police, Rubén Muñoz. He has shown her trust in the councilor for the area, María José Solana, to keep her in her position after she has recognized that she signed the overtime hours that Muñoz claimed and with which he has gone to court .

Solana has acknowledged signing the overtime, which took place between 2013 and 2017, although she took over the council in December 2016. The mayor has rejected that she will present her resignation, as the councilor of Podemos has requested, Erika Cadenas, although a court of first instance has ruled that the superintendent does not correspond to those overtime hours because he has a freely available supplement.

Regarding the video of the arrest of a neighbor in Antonio Domínguez this weekend denouncing unjustified beatings by Local Police officers, the mayor has once again shown his support for the police officers who intervened and has rejected any other assessment because there are complaints that will end up in court.