Teachers are demonstrating again this Saturday in Lisbon and Porto against the government’s proposals for a new recruitment and placement regime, but also to demand negotiations on old demands.
After two days of regional strikes in schools, the Platform of Nine Teachers’ Unions is calling on teachers to take to the streets today to show their class discontent.
The last demonstration called by the platform took place a little less than a month ago, on February 11, and many of the reasons for the protest remain unchanged, but in the meantime new reasons to take to the streets have emerged.
The unions and the Ministry of Education have been negotiating since September to reach an agreement on a new model for recruiting and placing teachers. Last week’s meeting ended without an agreement, and the unions have announced that they will request additional meetings.
The new proposal presented by the government this week did not convince the unions, who say that some of the “red lines” that the teachers had already pointed out, such as the creation of the Educational Zone Councils (QZP), have been maintained.
These bodies are made up of school principals and have the responsibility of distributing the service, being able to assign a teacher classes from two clusters.
Another bone of contention is the fact that teachers assigned to QZPs must apply to the staff grouping to which they belong and to three other adjacent or contiguous QZPs.
In addition to the diploma, the teachers are demanding that the government set a timetable to begin discussing issues such as the restoration of frozen working hours or the end of vacancies and quotas for access to the 5th and 7th grades.
Minimum services
On Thursday, teachers in the northern districts of Coimbra went on strike, and on Friday it was the turn of teachers in the southern districts of Leiria.
Schools had to provide minimum services, as ordered by the Court of Arbitration, which considered that this strike could not be seen in isolation, but rather as “another strike in a series of strikes that, taken as a whole, already threaten to jeopardize the right to education.
For the unions, the demand for minimum services has increased the reasons for the protests that will take place today from 15:30 in Lisbon and Porto.
The two protests will start from Rossio, in Lisbon, and from Praça do Marquês, in Porto, and their destinations will be the Assembleia da República, for those in Lisbon, and Aliados, for those in Porto.
Teachers have been on strike since December, with an indefinite strike called by the Union of All Education Professionals (Stop), which continues, in protest against the government’s proposal for teacher competitions and placement.
Meanwhile, the union platform, which does not include Stop, called for a strike that was held by districts for 18 days, culminating in a demonstration on February 11 that brought together more than 100,000 people in Lisbon, according to Fenprof estimates.