Teachers in Buenos Aires province will lead a two-day strike in adherence with the CTA union confederation’s general strike on Thursday.
Teachers unions are engaged in a seemingly endless battle with the provincial government of Macri-ally, Governor María Eugenia Vidal, over wages, which unions want adjusted to annual inflation.
“Teachers’ wages have been frozen since 2017 while [the government’s] economic policies have impacted strongly in teachers’ spending power to the tune of a 12-percent reduction”, unions said in a statement.
“Educational problems, which hinder the development of classes and jeopardise the right to education, continue unresolved”, the unions added, complaining that the Vidal government had worsened the conflict with teachers because “more than 50 days have passed with no invitation for collective wage bargaining talks”.
The Vidal government has offered teachers a 15 percent wage increase with no trigger clause.
After weeks of economic uncertainty in Argentina, the national government has dropped its ambitious 15-percent annual inflation target all together.
Private estimates place the figure for 2018 above 25 percent.
-TIMES
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