New forms of protest to be announced at mass rally on February 11
Teaching federations FENPROF and FNE, along with seven other teachers’ syndicates, have “guaranteed that their struggle will continue, admitting strikes until the end of the academic year”, writes tabloid Correio da Manhã today.
Everything President Marcelo said he was afraid of, in terms of recovering the learning of pupils lost through two years of pandemic restrictions, looks like coming true.
FENPROF secretary general Mário Nogueira has told reporters: “The struggle will continue if this is the will of teachers, and particularly if there is lack of political will from the government” – which has been the overriding bleat.
New forms of protest “will be announced at the protest on the 11th” – scheduled once again for Lisbon.
“We are going to have an extraordinary protest, and we are going to present extraordinary forms of struggle”, added Nogueira.
FENPROF et al’s ‘district strikes’ are due to end on February 8. But S.T.O.P. (the syndicate of all school employees), and SIPE (the independent syndicate of teachers) have ongoing, open-ended strikes – and none of these unions have been in the least bit impressed with the government’s approach this far.
“Absence of a proposal to recover years in which years of service were frozen is the principal complaint”, explains CM, citing one of the many teachers on the front lines yesterday in Viana do Castelo admitting: “Teachers will decide when this stops; from what I see, no-one wants to stop…”
According to FENPROF, adhesion to the district strikes has been “above 97%”.
