You heard it on “No Te Duermas”
Suteba. In the radio program, Mariano Hermida, a political leader and representative of SUTEBA (Unified Union of Education Workers of Buenos Aires) in La Matanza, discussed the teachers’ strike and its reasons.
Tomás Modini
@ModiniTomas
At the beginning of the phone conversation on “No Te Duermas,” Mariano Hermida stated: “Right now, we are with a significant group of teachers in San Justo Plaza, holding an open radio event to inform the community about the reasons for our strike today. In a moment, we will finish here and head to Route 3 in Casanova to join other organizations that will be staging a blockade as part of this transport strike and other unions as well.”
“This is a day of action amidst 500 blockades happening across the country. A map has been shared because there will also be blockades in the west and south zones, highlighting the brutal austerity measures being imposed by Milei,” he explained.
He also noted that “we are conducting an open radio session with a microphone where colleagues are sharing their daily experiences in their schools.”
Salary Issues
The first issue raised by the interviewee was salaries: “Obviously, the primary concern is the discontent with the purchasing power of salaries. In the Province of Buenos Aires, we just received a 4 percent increase on the June salary. That was the last agreement reached two weeks ago with the provincial unions, without any consultation or assembly involving those of us in the schools.”
“That is the first demand that is very strong because we are already shouldering the impact of Milei’s austerity, which removed the FONID (National Fund for Teacher Incentives) and eliminated the teachers’ collective bargaining. Here, at the provincial level, we are seeing a continuation of these austerity measures,” he asserted.
He detailed that “a starting primary school teacher is earning a basic salary of $255,000. Everyone can understand the level of austerity this represents for carrying out such an important task as education.”
Workload Issues
In line with this, Hermida described: “The basic salaries are so low that they force teachers—and I, as a secondary school professor—to take on extra hours and work multiple shifts just to earn a salary that allows us to live, and even then, it’s not achievable. Today is the 30th, and I can assure you that people aren’t making it halfway through the month.”
“For them (the government), we should be completely flexible workers. In a profession like education, which requires ongoing training and often involves working from home, grading, and more, we have a national government telling us that if we can’t make ends meet, we should find side jobs. This is revealing because it speaks to the quality or profile of the teacher they want, and that profile also reflects the type of school they envision,” he fired back.
To conclude, he maintained that “they want a school that places the teaching and education aspects in the background, turning it into a place where kids go just to eat,” and that “the teacher, underpaid and overworked, has to leave school to drive for Uber, to overextend themselves, and then be in optimal condition to lead a class filled with students in great need.”
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