Teachers return to the streets today with demonstrations in Lisbon and Porto – Sociedade

Teachers are holding another demonstration this Saturday in Lisbon and Porto against government proposals for a new recruitment and placement regime, but also to demand that negotiations on old claims be scheduled.

After two days of regional strikes in schools, the platform of nine teachers’ union organizations this Saturday appeals to teachers to take to the streets to show the discontent of the class.

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.

Trade unions and the Ministry of Education have been negotiating since September to try to reach an agreement on a new model for recruiting and placing teachers. Last week, the last meeting took place, which ended without an agreement, with the unions having already announced that they will ask for additional meetings.

The new proposal presented this week by the Government did not convince the unions that say they maintain some of the “red lines” that the teachers had already pointed out, as is the case of the creation of Pedagogical Zone Framework Councils (QZP).

These bodies are made up of school directors and are responsible for distributing the service, being able to assign classes from two groups to a teacher.

The fact that teachers linked in QZP have to compete for the grouping of the staff to which they belong and three other adjacent or contiguous QZP is another reason for disagreement.

In addition to the diploma, the teachers demand that the guardianship set a timetable to start discussing matters such as the recovery of frozen service time or the end of vacancies and quotas for access to the 5th and 7th grades.

On Thursday, teachers from the districts of Coimbra to the north were on strike and, on Friday, it was the turn of teachers from the districts of Leiria to the south.

Schools had to ensure minimum services, decreed by the Arbitration Court, which considered that this stoppage could not be seen in isolation, but rather as “one more strike in a sum of strikes that, as a whole, threaten to jeopardize the right the education”.

For the unions, the request for minimum services has increased the reasons to protest that this Saturday will take place from 3.30 pm in Lisbon and Porto.

The two protests start from Rossio, in Lisbon, and Praça do Marquês, in Porto, and are destined for the Assembly of the Republic, for those in Lisbon, and the Aliados, for those in Porto.

Teachers have been on strike since December, at the time with an indefinite strike called by the Union of All Education Professionals (Stop), which continues, in protest against the Government’s proposal for competitions and placement of teachers.

Meanwhile, the union platform, which does not include Stop, called for a strike that took place by district for 18 days, culminating in a demonstration on February 11, which brought together more than 100,000 people in Lisbon, according to estimates by the Fenprof.