Educators say there are “many steps to go” before agreement with guardianship

The Nine Education Workers Union Platform said Thursday that “many steps still need to be taken” until they reach an agreement with the Ministry of Education on the recruitment and placement of teachers.

“There are many steps to be taken in terms of competitions as well as other issues,” said Mario Nogueira, general secretary of Fenprof, on behalf of the platform, before embarking on another negotiation meeting with the secretary of state for education on a new model for teacher selection and placement. .

For Mario Nogueira, “it was a good sign” but “very hard” that this Thursday is the last meeting of negotiations that began in September, and unions are expected to ask for more meetings.

Among the “very strong tipping points” are a tutelage project to create Teachers’ Zone Councils, made up of school principals who now have the right to place teachers in two schools, difficulties with internal mobility, or overtaking teachers with more than years of service.

In addition, he added, “It is clear to teachers and unions that seniority issues” should be on the negotiating table.

The unions are demanding that the ministry schedule a negotiation process to discuss the restoration of the roughly six and a half years that teachers’ careers were frozen, noting that this right has already been guaranteed to teachers in the Azores and Madeira.

“The teachers would not even realize that we made an agreement and excluded these subjects,” stressed Mario Nogueira, reinforcing the idea that reaching an agreement with guardianship “was desirable” for the trade union platform.

Mario Nogueira also said that on the 27th, a decision was made by the arbitration commission on the request of the Ministry of Education to impose minimum services on the strikes announced by the platform for March 2 in the northern and central regions and March 3 in the south.

And he added that nine organizations on the platform have already presented their reasoned position challenging the government’s request.

The trade unionist also explained that although minimum services were set for the All Education Workers’ Union (STOP) strike, which has been ongoing since December, these minimum services do not apply to all stops.

“There was already this doubt another time, in the county strikes (which took place between the middle of January and the beginning of February), that with a minimum of services for a strike, this applied to everyone. And no, the arbitration board did not accept that,” he recalled.

In September, the unions and the ministry began the process of negotiating a new model for the recruitment and placement of teachers, which was also requested by the union structures.

The controversy has led to several protests, demonstrations and strikes focusing on STOP, a school strike that began on December 9 and is still ongoing and may continue beyond March 10, the last day they still deliver strike notices.