Thousands of teachers strike in Brazil as
government prepares attack on education
On September 22, thousands
of teachers throughout Brazil took
to the streets in defense of wages
and working conditions and
against education budget cuts
being prepared by President
Michel Temer of the PMDB
(Brazilian Democratic Movement
Party). It was the largest
demonstration of workers since
last month’s impeachment of
Workers Party (PT) president
DilmaRousseff.
The demonstrations were
called by the National Confederation
of Education Workers (CNTE),
which is affiliated to the CUT,
Brazil’s largest trade union
federation. Also joining the call for
strike action by the CNTE were
unions representing teachers and
workers at federal universities,
which led to a one-day strike on
some campuses.
As part of a broader program
of attacks on the Brazilian working
class, President Temer expects to
win approval in the National
Congress, by the end of this year,
of two proposed constitutional
amendments that would have
drastic effects on education. The
first, initially proposed by ousted
PT president Rousseff, freezes
the wages of existing public
employees and prevents the hiring
of new ones for the next two years.
The other one, authored by
president Temer, limits social
spending to the level of the
previous year’s inflation for the
next 20 years. Economists
estimate that it would slash
education spending by 60 b illion
22
reais (almost US$19 billion) over
the next 10 years, which would
make the goals of Brazil’s National
Education Plan unviable.
In addition to cuts in the
education budget, teachers
protested against Temer ’s
proposals for pension “reform,”
which would increase the
retirement age to 65, and a labor
reform, with includes the possibility
of employment contracts being
tied to hours worked and
productivity, and also would
increase the working day to 12
hours. Temer’s labor reform also
proposes that direct negotiations
between
employees and
employers take precedence over
collective agreements.
These “reform” proposals are
being advanced in the context of
the worst economic crisis in Brazil
since the Great Depression, with
economic contraction for a second
consecutive year, rising inflation
and the unemployment rate above
11 percent.
Cuts in real wages and
precarious working conditions
especially affect teachers, the
sector with the highest education
levels in Brazil, and the lowest
wages. The report “Education at
a Glance 2016,” published by the
Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) on September 16,
showed that Brazilian teachers
receive 39 percent of the average
income of teachers from 41
countries, ahead only of Colombian
and Indonesian teachers. It also
showed that Brazilian teachers
work the longest of all the
surveyed countries, with two
weeks per year more than the
average.
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Class Struggle