At the start of the school year in the province of Chaco, President
Alberto Fernández
praised this Monday the improvement in teacher salaries during his administration and even assured that now the "concern" of teachers is not to be affected by the tax on Profits.
The declaration, in the midst of the negotiations underway in various provinces for the recomposition of the salaries of education workers, provoked a
strong repudiation among the teachers' unions
, who warned him that the head of state that
more than a third of Argentine teachers receive wages below the poverty line
.
"The initial salary of a teacher is below the poverty line,"
Sergio Romero, general secretary of the Argentine Teachers Union (UDA) and secretary of Educational Policies of the CGT, assured
Clarín .
The leader of one of the five teacher unions with national representation explained that in the
last parity a salary floor of $130,000 was set
, which a third of the teachers will receive in the March salary, the first days of April.
"And
the poverty basket for January was already $163,500
," recalled the leader in an open criticism of Alberto Fernández's statements.
The criticisms against the President were also joined by references from the opposition of Juntos por el Cambio and the Frente de Izquierda, who reminded the president that the salary floor from which workers are reached by Profits amounts to $404,000, that
is
, more than
three times the value of the new minimum wage
set by the national government for teachers.
In the same sense as Romero, the deputy
Romina del Plá (FIT), who heads the minority in CTERA,
emphasized: "Alberto Fernández lives on another planet. This week the teachers stop in 12 provinces and more can be added. The discontent is ferocious because teacher salaries are below the poverty line," said the leader of the Left Front.
In dialogue with
Clarín
, Del Plá maintained that "it is a shame that the basic food basket in January was $163,000, while a teacher is going to collect $130,000 in April, in addition to the infrastructure problems in schools, where many cannot start the classes. There are 12 provinces of unemployment", repudiated the legislator.
On the contrary, from the leadership of CTERA, headed by Sonia Alesso and Roberto Baradel -two leaders enrolled in the Frente de Todos-,
they opted for silence
in the face of the President's statements.
The union only ruled on teacher salaries a couple of weeks ago to celebrate the joint agreement signed with the Minister of Education, Jaime Perczyk.
There they stated that the salary floor was raised from $90,338 to $130,000, starting in March;
an increase of 33.5% was achieved for the Teacher Incentive Fund (FONID) and connectivity, which will reach $16,164.
In addition, they indicated in the statement that "after many years of complaints, the issue of Income Tax of the fourth category is answered and specific items of the teaching function will not be considered for the calculation, such as material didactic, mobility, FONID, connectivity and hierarchical complement".
According to CTERA, a small percentage of teachers
are in this situation
, especially those with double shifts and greater seniority, school directors and school supervisors.
The data itself on the reality of teacher salaries contradicts the statements of Alberto Fernández.
"If the President talks about the national parity, it is about a guaranteed minimum salary of $130,000 for a single position.
Even in the event that the worker has two positions whose salary is cumulative, we would be talking about $260,000, far from the $404,000 from which Profits begin to be paid
," the coordinator of the Social Law Observatory of the Autonomous CTA, Luis Campos, explained to this newspaper.
"It is clear that for workers with little seniority, paying earnings is a long way off," he added.
Campos considered that, on the contrary, "some teachers who reach the maximum seniority (this depends on each jurisdiction) are closer to paying Earnings. There the disparity can be quite large."
The description states that in practice the teachers reached by the tribute represent a reduced universe within the educational sector.
The opposition also reacted harshly to Fernández's statements.
Especially to his assertion that during the Mauricio Macri government, teachers' salaries had "fallen to the bottom of the well."
The answer was given by the deputy
Alejandro Finocchiaro
, the last Minister of Education who had the management of Cambiemos, who highlighted the accumulated teacher salary increases between 2015 and 2019.
In this regard, Finocchiaro (PRO) pointed out to
Clarín
that when Macri took office, at the end of 2015, the teacher salary floor was equal to the Minimum Vital and Mobile Salary, which at that time amounted to $5,588 and currently stands at $67,743, compared to to the $130,000 agreed as basic teacher salary in the month of March.
"The salary increases that we agreed on led the teacher salary well above the Minimum, Vital and Mobile Salary. It is false that they have fallen to the bottom of the well, as President Fernández said," said the legislator.
look also
The salary floor of Profits is already out of date and the taxpayers ask that it be adjusted every month
Alberto Fernández, at the beginning of classes: "Today the concern of teachers is not to pay Earnings"
