Three teacher unions, including the majority USTEC, have announced the call for a strike for September 6, the first day of class for infants, primary and ESO, despite the rapprochement that the new Minister of Education, Anna Simó, has offered to unions.
Under the slogan “For the defense of quality public schools and in Catalan”, the unions USTEC-STEs (IAC), Intersindical and CGT Enseñanza, have announced the strike despite having scheduled a meeting tomorrow Friday with the new minister.
The announcement of the strike is read in the key of pressure before the conclusions of the monographic plenary session of Education and before the meeting of the unions with the new team of the department of Anna Simó.
The demands put forward by the teachers’ unions, which have maintained strong tensions with the previous Minister of Education, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, require “the new Minister to initiate a stage of dialogue and negotiation with the social party and listen and value the the workers of the educational centers, who are the ones who provide the service and educate the children and adolescents of the country”.
Yesterday, when the Education monographic plenary session began, dozens of representatives of the teachers’ unions USTEC, CGT, Intersindical and UGT demonstrated outside the doors of Parliament, to demand that Anna Simó take a new course in educational policy.
The protesters demanded a “real negotiation to end the cuts” that the collective has been dragging on since 2010, a stability plan for interim personnel that exceeds 3 years of seniority and fails to pass merit and competitive examinations and establish a calendar “rational and consensual” school.
The teachers displayed posters with the photographs of the retired minister, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, and of the new head of Catalan education, on which you could read “Cambray liquidated” and Anna Simó “don’t do like Cambray”.
The President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and the Minister of Education called on Tuesday to reinforce the “consensus” around the Catalan school model to face the “attack” of PP and Vox, which seeks an “involution” in terms of rights.
In his speech at the start of the monographic debate on education, Aragonès remarked that “the Catalan school is the first pillar of social cohesion” in Catalonia, so those who want to attack it have a “clear desire to weaken” the country.
After a first half of the legislature marked by the confrontation between the educational community and the former Minister of Education Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, Aragonès considered that a stage is opening, with Anna Simó at the head of the ministry, in which it will be “essential to strengthen the trust” with the educational world.
