Lawyers will make themselves unavailable for a week
Auckland duty lawyers are set to strike this month to protest low pay and inadequate working conditions, reported RNZ.
The lawyers will make themselves unavailable for one week. Duty lawyer Dennis Ansley said last month that the movement was supported by 75% of duty lawyers in Auckland, as well as duty lawyers in Christchurch, Gisborne and Hawke's Bay.
“Out of frustration, what we're doing next month is we're taking industrial action, we're not making ourselves available for duty for one whole week in January”, Ansley said in a statement to RNZ that was published last month. “What we're trying to do is give the government a message that if you don't come to the party and talk to us, and try to make our job conditions better and our pay rate better, we're going to show you how important we are and how vital our work is”.
He pointed out that duty lawyers assisted 60-80 individuals daily at the Auckland District Court and that the work exposed duty lawyers to physical and verbal abuse. Ansley said he had been threatened while another duty lawyer had been assaulted.
Ansley added that the court was housed in an old building that had experienced flooding, grown black mould, and had faulty air-conditioning. He said that some judges backed the strike.
“By not having a majority of duty lawyers being available for a whole week, it's going to create a real shortage of people on the ground, and I don't know what's going to happen, they'll probably have to put cases off, they may have to just concentrate on the overnight arrests and maybe do very little”, Ansley said in a statement published by RNZ.
Tracey Baguley, the justice ministry’s national service delivery group manager, said that the ministry knew of the strike plan.
“The ministry's priority is to maintain continuity of service for court users during this period and are actively working through options to ensure there is limited disruption, if any”, Baguley said in a statement published by RNZ last month.
Baguley said that remuneration across the legal aid scheme was being evaluated under the Legal Aid Triennial review, including duty lawyer service-related proposals.
A spokesperson from Paul Goldsmith's office also indicated that the justice minister was being updated on the plan.
