The Union of All Education Professionals (STOP) announced this Tuesday that it will respect the minimum services decreed by the Government, but it will not stop the ongoing strike in the fight for better working conditions in public schools.
“Although we consider these minimum services illegal, which were decided by an arbitration panel and not by an arbitration tribunal, we will not appeal to disrespect them,” said the president of STOP, André Pestana, at a press conference outside the Faculty of Economics. from the University of Coimbra.
The union leader left the guarantee that, with regard to STOP, the strike of education professionals will continueso that it will be defined in the meetings with the strike commissions, “always everything within the law”.
As of this Wednesday, teachers and non-teachers, who have been on strike since December, for an indefinite period, called by STOP, will have to guarantee minimum services in schoolsfollowing a decision made on Friday by the Arbitration College.
STOP also announced that it will judicially appeal the decision to promulgate the minimum services, the process of which could take months, continuing with the fight “and the fantastic mobilization” to maintain the legitimate claims of education professionals, who demand “the best school and quality for all”. students”.
“Since we innovated in December, first with a teacher strike and then starting in January with a non-teacher strike, we believe that we will be able to innovate and keep this flame burning, which is impressive and will continue to maintain this very legitimate question of better conditions for those who they work in schools”, stressed André Pestana.
According to the leader, the Government is not carrying out “a real negotiation” because it is not negotiating the “main demands, which led thousands of teachers and non-teachers to join this fight and strike.”
STOP believes that the main demands are for the equality of the teachers of the continent with those of the archipelagosmore professional teachers in schools, with better salaries and decent careers, salary increases that offset inflation by at least 120 euros per month for teaching and non-teaching staff and the calendar to negotiate other issues that concern those who work in schools.
Underlining that he will participate in a “constructive” manner in the ministerial meeting scheduled for Friday, André Pestana hopes that the Minister of Education “recognizes that the mobilization that returned in January to take to the streets, for the second time, close to 100,000 protesters , it has to bring to the negotiating table issues related to non-teaching staff, equality between teachers from the continent and the archipelagos and salary increases, which compensate for inflation”.
Source: Observadora
