Romania: Education unions decide to block academic year.
Bucharest, March 10 /Agerpres/ - The leaders of the Free Trade Unions Federation in Education at a meeting here on Wednesday decided to continue the protests up to blocking the end of the academic year, Federation chairman Aurel Cornea announced at a news conference on Wednesday.
The unions decided that the protests will include rallies, picketing and token strikes over March 15-April 2, while over April 12-30 the Government's headquarters and the headquarters of the Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sport will be picketed; furthermore, a protest rally will be staged in Bucharest over May 1-15, to be followed by a nationwide token strike over May 15-31. The unions will go on all-out strike in early June, thus blocking the academic year.
The unionists will also file complaints against the Romanian Government at the international bodies.
'Today (Wednesday- editor's note) we had a meeting with the education minister, which we left disappointed. We got no answer to any of the problems we raised, we only got some kind of a promise that there will be a meeting in the next two weeks on the issue of the education salary benefits and the court rulings that have not yet been implemented', Cornea said.
The teachers are discontent that 17,000 jobs in the pre-higher education were shed in last September, that their salary was cut by 15 percent in November and December and the entire teaching staff has got lower pay starting this January. The unionists are also dissatisfied at the lack of money for the payment of salaries starting from March and at another 15,000 planned redundancies to be made this year. AGERPRES
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