This Thursday, after the Labor Day holiday, Santa Fe public teachers are voting in schools whether they accept the latest salary offer presented by the government or oppose it and move forward with new measures of force. In 14 departments there are only motions of rejection subject to voting, among them, those with the highest concentration of teachers: Rosario and La Capital.
In only 5 Amsafe departmental sections, the two alternatives (accept and reject) were considered and these belong to the central-northern province: General Obligado, Vera, San Cristóbal, Las Colonias and San Justo.
Does this mean that there is a strike at the door? “We cannot say until the voting in the afternoon and evening shift schools is completed. Tomorrow (this Friday) the definition will be carried out in the provincial assembly, where the position of the colleagues will be summarized. throughout the province,” responded Rodrigo Alonso, general secretary of Amsafe Provincial.
One of the rejection motions that most arose from the departmental assemblies that took place on Tuesday in each place, is the carrying out of a 24-hour strike next Wednesday the 8th, which would be added to the national general strike planned by the GGT for the Thursday, May 9. There are other alternatives that also propose force measures for the following week, in case a new salary proposal is not received.
“It is clear that there is great unrest in the schools, that we are very angry and concerned about what this liquidation of salaries is, about what this award for ‘perfect attendance’ is, which for us is ‘presenteeism’. Furthermore, because of this intention of the government, which is not pedagogical but purely economic. Because here the government proposes that you go to work, no matter how you are, if you have a fever, if you are sick, you have to go,” argued the leader. And he added that “that bothers us a lot, just as we are concerned about the progress he is trying to make in pension matters.”
The teachers’ response will be known this Friday in the provincial assembly that will start at 9:30 and will have its resolution around noon. The Sadop, for private teaching – which has another consultation mechanism through delegates – will begin its meeting on Friday at noon, so the definition would be during siesta hours.
Perfect attendance and stoppages
If a strike is defined, teachers who comply with it would lose the monetary extra for Perfect Attendance. Asked if this would lower the degree of adherence to the measures, Alonso indicated: “We have a characteristic in Amsafe and that is that we debate a lot. We have different positions, there is a lot of discussion, then we vote and synthesize it.”
“Once this happens, we all carry out the assembly resolution, both those who vote for one thing and those who vote for another. Therefore, we are convinced that beyond the government’s attempts to try to stop the measures of force or generate actions that imply that the measures are not followed by the majority of our colleagues, the truth is that we are not seeing that scenario. We are seeing a situation where we are going to once again ratify the strength that our union has,” he assured.
The offer is a “rebate”
According to the numbers managed by the union, the 2024 salary proposal “is made up of 18% that was accepted in mid-April; and of this 5% for April and 5% for May (the latter based on a calculation based on March). If one puts it in values as of December 2023, it more or less means a 32% salary increase,” calculated Alonso, for whom “this would cover the inflation of January and February.”
“In other words, what the government proposes is that in the first days of June you recover what you lost between January and February. It is a proposal that is undoubtedly a salary reduction, which is not consistent with the debt that the government has with workers, nor with the loss due to the Teaching Incentive, nor with the inflation reported by the Provincial Institute of Statistics and Census,” he considered.
