News that had stopped being news
is news again
.
What seems like a tongue twister is another way of saying that the start of classes is once again at risk after four years where CTERA (the national teaching union)
only made two strikes
.
One for the conviction of a union member in Chubut and another for violence in Jujuy, after a constitutional reform approved when Gerardo Morales was still governor.
Never due to uncontrolled inflation or salary arrears that, in provinces such as Alicia Kirchner's Santa Cruz in 2017, caused
115 days of class to be lost due to forceful measures
.
The argument this time was that the Government had not called for negotiations on the national teaching parity, something that changed this Thursday.
This is a formalism, since it is each province and the City of Buenos Aires that negotiate and pay teacher salaries.
The national agreement only serves as a floor for the different joint ventures.
The real reason why classes are difficult to start on time is in part because of the fight that Javier Milei started with the provinces and in which Lali Espósito ended up involved.
As?
After the failure of the Omnibus Law in Deputies, the Government announced that there would be
greater adjustments for the provinces
.
First it was announced that no more funds would be transferred to subsidize transportation and now it was education's turn.
Last week, the country's 24 Ministers of Education - of all political stripes - signed a letter addressed to the Secretary of National Education, Carlos Torrendell, in which they expressed concern about not receiving the FONID, funds known as “teacher incentive” and that the provinces use to complement the payment of salaries.
The response to the letter was made public yesterday by Milei in an interview on La Red radio. “There is no more teacher incentive fund, (the provinces) have to pay for it themselves, they should stop doing benefit recitals,” he launched.
And she resumed her public fight with Lali by adding: “That they pay the teachers instead of hiring artists and doing political advertising and attacking spaces with different ideas.”
Milei finished off his attack by explaining that “the responsibility for education belongs to the provinces.”
As true as that the teaching incentive that the Nation sent to the provinces
represented around 10% of teachers' salaries
.
The provinces took charge of the February salaries.
Some governors led by Axel Kicillof threaten to go to court to demand the funds from the teacher incentive created by law in 1998.
Justice has already stopped another initiative by Milei that could have minimized the teacher strikes.
In the DNU, which went hand in hand with the Omnibus Law, there was a labor reform that incorporated education as an “essential service” and established that in the event of collective conflicts “in no case may the parties be able to negotiate or impose coverage of less than 75%.” % of the normal provision of the service in question.
That is, open schools and a guarantee of teaching classes.
Without funds, without labor reform and with the degree of conflict that Milei plans, all roads lead to a complicated start to the school year with a national strike in sight.
Roberto Baradel already warned, reappearing in his role as a union member after campaigning with Sergio Massa and Axel Kicillof.
It will serve the president to feed the new rift that he yesterday described as “ordering in ideological terms.”
In the middle, as always, there will be millions of children without classes.