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The USTEC-STEs (IAC), CGT and Intersindical education sector unions are maintaining the strike they have called for this Wednesday, the first day of the 2023-2024 academic year in Catalonia, considering that there is a "firm" lack of commitment from the Catalan education department. With hours to go until the planned stoppage, around 50 members of the educational unions gathered this Monday at the Generalitat's education headquarters to demand dialogue: "We want to negotiate", they exclaimed. The spokesperson for CGT, Miquel González, confirmed that in this first term the teachers will take to the streets "again", and recalled that the mobilization of this September 6th is part of the cycle of stoppages that began two years ago to reverse past budget cuts.

This Monday's protest outside the education department took place at the same time as minister Anna Simó was giving a press conference the start of the school year in Catalonia, which this year will have 20,000 fewer students in infant and primary schools. The unions, after making statements to the press, blocked Via Augusta for 15 minutes, repeating chants such as "This is not teaching, it's survival", "Anna Simó, we want negotiation", "Reverse the cuts or strike, strike, strike", "It's not five days of holiday, it's ten years of cuts", among other slogans.

The educational union protest outside the Catalan ministry/ Photo: ACN

 

"No more cuts to public education," says the USTEC-STEs banner / Photo: ACN

The USTEC union spokesperson, Iolanda Segura, explained that they are maintaining the scheduled strike to demand the recovery of the working conditions they lost in past budget cutbacks as well as improvements in "this educational service that has so many shortcomings and so many problems to solve". In addition, Segura described the department's decisions as "arbitrary" and cited as an example the change to the start of the school year which, according to the USTEC spokeswoman, shows the lack of negotiation with the unions. She also pointed out that in the private sector "there are better working conditions, better hours and better salaries" and she recalled that Catalan teachers are the education sector group who receive the least from the state.

For his part, the spokesperson of the CGT demanded that the Catalan government give a "firm guarantee and commitment" to reverse the cuts and criticized that fact that the school year begins with a meeting of the sector table when a strike has been called: "It shows that there is a very serious conflict in education," he added. The Intersindical representative, Marc Martorell, denounced the "hypocrisy" of the political leaders who on Sunday lamented the death of the linguist Carme Junyent, a leading voice in defence of the Catalan language, while "today and tomorrow they will deny the right to be schooled in Catalan to a good part of the students in Catalonia", he pointed out.