FRENCH TEACHERS STRIKE FOR BETTER PAY, UPPING PRESSURE ON EMBATTLED MINISTER

Sat 03 February 2024:

Several thousand teachers have marched to the streets of Paris, beginning at Place Edmond Rostand in the 6th arrondissement and ending at the National Education Ministry.

Protesters on Thursday issued “a warning to the government that remains deaf,” denouncing a lack of interest in and treatment of public schools, as well as teacher pay.

The walkout is “a warning to the government” about teachers’ “daily life, their suffering at work and the lack of recognition, especially in their pay,” said primary school teachers’ union FSU-Snuipp, predicting “hundreds of schools will be closed”.

The union added that “the situation has been inflamed by the nomination of a part-time minister who has forfeited her credibility”.

There have been also criticisms against Education Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera when she claimed she had put her children into a private school because of “loads of hours with no proper replacement teacher” at her son’s public primary school.

Mathieu Moreau, a professor and secretary of the union CGT Educ’action 95, told Anadolu that he denounced the choice of “a part-time minister,” describing Oudea-Castera as “disconnected from reality.”

Also a former junior tennis champion, the new minister was handed the education brief on top of her sports portfolio earlier this month, just months before the Paris Olympics.

“It’s been more than 10 years since I last demonstrated for my job. In the last few weeks, this has been the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I want people to respect my profession,” Elodie, a teacher in Paris told Anadolu.

“The head of the establishment in the public schools does not have the power to replace absent teachers, even if it is a legitimate absence. And I think no woman in France would want to have her maternity leave taken away and deprived of her right,” she said.

“After all, we must understand that teachers are not robots, they have the right to be well paid and to be absent because they have maternity or paternity leave or simply because they are sick,” Elodie added.

The secondary school union FSU-SNUipp said 65% of teachers in Parisian schools were on strike and at least 130 schools were completely closed on the day of the mobilization on Thursday.

This has been the strongest mobilization since protests against former Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer in 2022.

“I’ll be on the street to express my profound disagreement with… what the minister said about public schools,” said Anne, a maths teacher from Nice, who did not give her surname.

“I feel wounded and humiliated by a minister who’s completely out of touch,” she added.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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