Prime Minister, António Costa, has faced down last week’s threat to his administration with opposition parties backing off from a full-battle over teachers’ pay that triggered a political crisis last week.
The fading opposition means Costa's socialists look stronger still in advance of the European elections.
Costa said last Friday that his minority government would quit if MPs backed a proposal to compensate teachers for their nine-year pay freeze which would cost the treasury around €800 million a year.
Opposition parties aligned themselves with the Left Bloc to threaten Costa’s Socialist Party but realised they might well lose badly in a general election.
Despite the climbdown, the PM attacked the centre-right parties who were largely responsible for introducing austerity measures before the Socialists came to power in 2015 and started to ease them off.
Under the socialist administration, Portugal has undergone a period of economic growth while and has cut its budget deficit.
Teachers and other public sector workers have been hoping deals to compensate for pay freezes.
“A government that does not respect the teachers really has no future,” Mário Nogueira, leader of the main teachers' union, wrote on Monday in Público.
Comments
Peter, when you say that government has unilaterally reneged on contractual arrangements, it is not that straight forward. This government has no majority and relies on a coalition to pass laws and some of these drastic measures were imposed by Troika under previous other governments, PSD i think.
Not trying to defend this particular problem with the teachers which deserve better treatment and support from government but I can see this can being kicked down the road for the next government to deal with.
As far as I am aware new and inexperienced teachers have a temporary contract which means that not only they have to apply for a position every year but also can be sent to the opposite end of the country. I know it doesn't make any sense to me either. Only after a certain number of years in service can they choose to stay in the same school.
Someone thought that a teachers job is not tough enough so decided to make it even more challenging
Did the deputies in the chamber offer to share the pain?
Can AL cast his expert eye over the issue of new teachers being posted annually to different parts of the country, so that their length of service in any one place is always short. For some time, they can in a position to be made redundant with no employment rights.
The government did not freeze pay, it froze career progression which affected salary increases. This was done during the austerity period to enable the previous governments to balance the books. It was not just teachers that were affected public servants the judicial and the military were also affected by these measures. The issue is that teachers have a different rules for career progression, I'm not sure of this but teacher only need an average of 4 years to progress where civil servants need an average of 10 years. The current government tried to compromise and offer around 70% of what was frozen to all affected but took into account the time for career progression. So teachers got a bit less than expected and are not a happy bunch.
It seems to me that government has reneged on the contractual terms of the employment of teachers; not their basic pay, but their annual increments. If that is so, why does the Teachers´ Union not sue the government in court?
Teachers also suffer from diabolical displacement practices, so that their service in one place is too short to give them employment rights.
Can anyone explain the precise nature of the dispute? And why teachers have been singled out for poor treatment?