Teachers in Buenos Aires province have rejected the provincial government’s offer of a 16-percent wage increase.
Nationwide, the education sector’s collective wage bargaining began six months ago. Since then, only a handful of provincial unions have sealed deals of around 15 percent with their respective regional government authorities.
Buenos Aires province teachers are demanding a 30-percent increase in line with private inflation estimates for 2019.
In the provincial capital La Plata on Monday, María Eugenia Vidal’s administration offered unions a 16.7% increase up to July, with promise to go back to the table in August and renegotiate for the rest of the year.
“Why would we not reject this, since it’s the same offer as the one before it?”, SUTEBA secretary general Roberto Baradel told reporters.
“They hadn’t even told us what their offer was when you (the journalists) had already received WhatsApp messages from them telling you that the offer had improved”, he added.
A court last week forced the Vidal government back to the negotiating table. On that note, Baradel complained of the “95 days that passed without a call” to resume talks.
“The government has the chance to respond to what we are proposing, which is 30 percent with a trigger clause as well as more in terms of infrastructure and food halls”, he added.
Present at yesterday’s meeting with the teachers unions were the province’s General Director of Education Gabriel Sanchez Zinny; Public Affairs Minister Federico Suarez; and Economic Coordination and Politics Undersecretary Damián Bonari.
-TIMES
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