Teachers in Portugal begin 18 days of strikes, protests

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) – Teachers in Portugal began an 18-day strike on Monday in Lisbon, demanding better working conditions from the Education Ministry.

The strike is set to continue on working days until Feb. 8, rotating to all the different Portuguese districts and ending in Porto. The strikes will be accompanied by protests in the main square of each district’s capital city.

Eight unions are behind the nationwide rotating strikes: Fenprof, ASPL, Pro-Ordem, SEPLEU, SINAPE, SINDEP, SIPE y SPLIU. On top of that, teachers belonging to the STOP union have been on strike since Dec. 9 and the SIPE teachers’ union has also called a partial walkout.

The eight unions, which originally ruled out a strike, said they are taking to the streets to pressure the Portuguese government to “abandon its eight extremely damaging and disruptive proposals” and find solutions to other problems “that have been dragging on for years and have made work in schools unbearable.”

Some specific complaints are related to professional instability, precarity and overloading teachers with unpaid overtime.

“I hope the education minister will realize that we’ve reached a point of no return,” a teacher who began striking on Monday told local media. “We can’t continue with these conditions. We don’t feel respected.”

On Saturday, police said 20,000 people marched on the streets of Lisbon, demanding better pay and working conditions for teachers and for the resignation of Education Minister Joao Costa. Organizers said more than 100,000 teachers and parents turned up.

The salary for an entry-level teacher in Portugal is just over €22,300 ($24,100) per year. The average for 14 western European nations is almost double that, according to the Spanish union UGT. After 15 years of teaching, the average salary in Portugal sits below €29,000.