The movement was announced the same day the Parliament began examining a bill aimed at establishing a minimum service in certain public sectors, including that of education.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
After railway workers, nurses, paramedics or public officials, teachers from England and Wales joined Monday January 16 the cohort of strike sectors, announcing seven days of mobilization, between February and March , the first of which will take place on 1 er February. Their Scottish colleagues also started a sixteen -day strike.
Teachers are demanding salary increases in line with inflation that exceeds 10 %. The movement was announced the day the Parliament started examining a bill aimed at establishing a minimum service in certain public sectors. “It was a really difficult decision to make for our members,” said the National Education Union, the main teaching union, on Twitter . This vote “sends a resounding message to the government: we will not stay there to attend the destruction of education without resisting,” he adds.
“We have expressed our concerns to the successive ministers of education concerning the wages of teachers and supervisory staff [of schools] and the financing of schools and universities, but instead of solving the problem, they are sitting on it, “indignant her two leaders, Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, in a joint statement.
🚨 The Results are in! 🚨
In Our Ballot, @Neunion Members vote in overwhelming number to take historic Strike Acti… https://t.co/fb9lh3y92i
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called on teachers not to be overwhelmed by recalling the “substantial damages” already suffered by students during the COVVI-19 pandemic, during which schools had been closed many weeks .
“desperate attempt”
These initiatives have been part of a broader social movement that has been shaking the United Kingdom for several months. Many sectors demand wage increases due to inflation. On Monday, the nurses, who must already disengage two days this week, announced that they would stop work again for two days in February (the 6 and 7), always to claim an increase in wages.
The union Royal College of Nursing (RCN), at the origin of this movement widely supported by the population, said that more hospitals would be affected only during their first two days of strike, in December.
“It is with the heavy heart that the nurses will be on strike this week and again in three weeks. Rather than negotiating, Rishi Sunak chose the strike, once,” said Pat Cullen, secretary general RCN. “We do this in a desperate attempt to see [the Prime Minister] and the ministers save the NHS”, the public health system, she added, calling on the government to provide tens of thousands of vacant positions in the Hospitals.
Faced with strikers, the conservative government is inflexible and argues the delicate situation of public finances. In early January, he presented his bill to establish a minimum service in several sectors, such as health, education or transport. The unions see it as a questioning of the right to strike and the head of the Labor opposition, Keir Starmer, called on the government “to make compromises”.