Teachers and the Ministry of Education return this Friday to talks about a new model for hiring and placing teachers, with the unions disagreeing with the guardianship proposal and demanding other issues be discussed.
This Friday will see the second meeting of the fifth round of negotiations on a process that began in September and has been a highly competitive process.
Unions have already announced that demands on the streets and in schools will continue until the ministry commits itself to negotiating other issues, such as a phased restoration of the frozen service life.
At the moment, there is a new recruitment and placement model on the table, developed by the ministry, to try to correct problems such as the shortage of teachers in schools or the unreliability of teachers known for “walking the house on their backs.”
The unions strongly challenged proposals such as giving headmasters the autonomy to select a subset of teachers based on school projects.
The Ministry of Education makes a number of changes to the original draft, accepting such requirements as the placement of teachers only taking into account professional graduation, but trade unions continue to point out the shortcomings of the document.
In the new proposal, unveiled on Wednesday, one of the novelties was the ability for tenured teachers to enter an annual competition that allows them to change schools, increasing their chances of staying closer to home.
“The diploma of competitions does not correspond to what should be an honest diploma, in which no one is inferior to the other,” said the general secretary of the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof) at the end of the meeting on Wednesday.
But even if the ministry’s proposal was “an emergency document, which it isn’t,” teachers would continue to fight, said Mario Nogueira, who represents the majority of the 12 unions convened simultaneously for this new round of talks.
Mario Nogueira reiterated that the challenge will not end until the guardianship agrees to negotiate on issues such as the phased restoration of frozen service time or the end of vacancies and quotas for access to the 5th and 7th echelons.
In addition to this Friday meeting, which will address issues not covered on Wednesday, new meetings are already scheduled for February 23rd.
The “war” between the ministry and the unions has led to protests in schools and on the streets, as well as the planning of many strikes, highlighting the stoppage of the Union of All Educational Workers (Stop), which went on strike in early December. which has already announced that it will keep the strike notice until March 10.
The trade union platform, of which Fenprof is a part, has also announced two regional strikes: schools in the north will be paralyzed on March 2, and a strike will take place in the south on March 3.
The Ministry of Education told the unions on Wednesday that it had requested minimum services for two regional strikes, similar to what happened with the strike organized by Stop.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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