The National Teachers’ Federation will meet Thursday with the Ministry of Education for a “technical meeting” on the teacher competition, Fenprof announced this Wednesday that it did not reach an agreement with the guardianship last week.
In a statement, Fenprof explained that she was invited to a technical meeting “in which she will participate in order to try to clarify various aspects that are not clear in the proposals of the ministry and that the meeting on the 20th did not allow for clarification.”
Fenprof is part of a union platform that has called for a nationwide school strike across counties through February.
Last week, she participated in the third round of negotiations on a new model for hiring and placing teachers, leaving the meeting without any agreement, confirming that planned strikes were underway, as well as a national demonstration.
At the end of the meeting, Fenprof General Secretary Mario Nogueira told reporters that there are doubts about some of the issues discussed and that the federation will send a number of opinions.
Today, the first opinions on the new model of competition and placement of teachers, as well as “proposals for opening other negotiation processes” will be sent to the ministry, the federations add.
Among the proposals criticized by Fenprof is the Minister of Education’s announcement that more teachers will reach levels 5 and 7: 75% of level 4 teachers and 58% of level 6 teachers.
Mario Nogueira classified João Costa’s statements as “pure illusionism”, saying that the ministry limited itself to presenting percentages representing the sum of current access vacancies and quotas for “Very Good” and “Excellent” grades that allow automatic access to both levels.
For teachers, vacancies and quotas should be abolished, as has already happened in the Azores and Madeira Islands.
The full restoration of the seniority, which was frozen during the “troika” and is already guaranteed to teachers on the islands, is another career moment that they want to negotiate.
Fenprof also criticized the minister for the way he announced on January 18 a proposal to create three pay scales for salaried teachers.
Currently, teachers always earn the same regardless of length of service, but Mario Nogueira stressed that this situation has already been the subject of an analysis by the European Commission, which has demanded that the Portuguese government regulate the situation.
Since 1999, there has been a Community directive that prevents the abuse of the use of fixed-term contracts and discrimination in the pay of these contractors, recalled Fenprof.
Fenprof emphasizes that the ministry’s proposal means that “thousands of teachers” will be able to receive, at most, about 1,300 net euros, for which “they will have to maintain accommodation hundreds of kilometers from their family home, maintain a second home and all the costs associated with the removal of this territory.”
For the federation, the solution is to integrate the teachers into the staff when they have been in service for three years, which would remove the insecurities.
There are currently three strikes in schools organized by different unions: STOP started with strikes in December last year, then SIPE with a strike in the first hour of work, and then the union platform, where Fenprof, chose one strike per day in each district of the country.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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