Four months later, indefinite school strike comes to an end

An indefinite strike called by the Union of All Education Workers (Stop) comes to an end this week, more than four months after the first day of the stoppage, but without a response to basic demands.

Even though these notices are circulated until Sunday, this Friday is the last working day of the shutdown that brought teachers and non-teachers together and which, especially in the early weeks, led to the closure of several schools.

“A lesson in citizenship”: This is how Stop coordinator André Pestana summed up the protest, stating from the outset that it was not the strike that harmed student learning, but the worsening teacher shortage.

Initially, it was only aimed at teachers and came about as a response to a revision of the competition regime that was being discussed between the Ministry of Education and trade unions at the time, and also as a response to old grievances.

Among the main demands, they demanded the calculation of the entire service life (six years, six months and 23 days), the termination of vacancies to enter the 5th and 7th echelons and the improvement of working conditions and wages, including for non-teaching workers who later were on strike.

Faced with instability in schools and the uncertainty of a strike with no end in sight, the Ministry of Education eventually demanded the introduction of minimum services, which were set by the arbitration court.

Minimum services came into effect after the second month of the strike and were successively extended by the court, which later included teaching activities (at least three hours of classes or study time per day).

The strike was also marked by the opinion of the Prosecutor General’s Office (GPO) on the request of the Ministry of Education on the legality of the way they were carried out.

PGR considers that there is a discrepancy between the strike notices given to the Ministry of Education and the information given by the union to the teachers because, despite notices that the strike will correspond to the daily working day, it is possible for teachers to determine the specific length of the period during which they join the strike, making it in these cases a strike with characteristics similar to those of a “self-service” strike.

The end of the strike for an indefinite period, however, does not mean the end of the struggle for the “Stop”, which already called for a new nationwide strike on 24, 26, 27 and 28 April. On April 25, the union returns to the streets with a demonstration in Lisbon, the fifth since December.

“It was decided, together with the strike commissions, to suspend [a greve por tempo indeterminado] April 16, but they also remained open because negotiations are ongoing, new forms of struggle are needed,” Carla Piedade from Stop Luse explained on Tuesday.