The mayor of Palma paid an illegal bonus to the former police chief

The socialist mayor of Palma, jose hilapaid an illegal bonus of 17,950 euros to the former head of the Local Police Josep Palouzie during the last legislature. A salary bonus approved unilaterally by Palma City Council for the former head of the Sant Ferran barracks, today already retired, and who will occupy the eighth place in the candidacy of the PSC to the Girona City Council for the municipal elections in May, a city in which he had previously been the head of the Local Police.

It so happens that Palouzié was the police superintendent of Gerona when he was mayor of this Catalan town in the past decade, the fugitive former president of the Generalitat, Carlos Puigdemónt.

In a forceful judicial sentence after the complaint presented by the UGT union, which is already firm and does not admit any further appeals, the judge declares the productivity supplement paid to Palouzié null and void. In practice this means that this must return those illegally received remunerations. A salary supplement that the former head of the Local Police of Palma received and that was added to his salary, one of the highest salaries in the entire Consistory: 74,000 euros a year, more than Mayor Hila himself (60,000).

In addition to ordering the Palma City Council to pay the costs, which must pay the costs of the litigants during this judicial process, the judge ruled that the municipal government violated the right to collective bargaining, and it did not negotiate with the union centrals the criteria to allocate productivity. A manifest arbitrariness by the municipal government, ignoring the procedure established precisely to avoid them.

In an internal statement to its affiliates, the UGT union section recalls that Already in his day he warned the municipal government that “the legal channels were not being followed, despising the representatives of the social part in terms of collective bargaining, being the usual trend of the years 2015-2019 in the area of ​​​​Citizen Security, with a political part, which, making excuses for its technicians, did not negotiate, but rather imposed their criteria, and if you do not agree, you put me in contention ».

In the note, the union acknowledges that, “It was a decision that did not affect us at all, nor did it harm the collective, however, we had to denounce it, we could not look the other way, because not doing so meant giving in to the imposition, and deny any principle in collective bargaining.”

In this sense, the union lets the municipal government know that the latest events that have taken place in the Citizen Security area chaired by the socialist councilor, Joana Maria Adrover, with the modification of working conditions through service instructions, as denounced by this newspaper, «once again violates the right to collective bargaining.”

“They have given us the reason, and we want this letter to serve as a reminder, about the importance of correctly following the collective bargaining processes and their adjustment to current legislation,” the union center abounds, which concludes the statement to its affiliates , remembering that «Negotiations usually go better when there is trust. It is very difficult to negotiate when both parties mistrust.”