The rejection of the agreement with Education due to its insufficiency
Recently, there has been an agreement between CCOO, UGT and the Department of Education led by counselor Anna Simó. However, there are critical voices against this pact that consider it insufficient to address current challenges in education.
USTEC, the most influential organization within the Sectoral Roundtable, has expressed its rejection of all points of the agreement. According to them, this signature is the result of an ultimatum by the administration and separate negotiations with CCOO and UGT, unions that represent only 20% of non-university teaching staff in Catalonia.
Iolanda Segura, national spokesperson for USTEC, highlights that the points negotiated with the Department of Education have not been reflected in the document presented during the meeting.
A pending commitment to reverse past cuts
Although the main objective of the agreement is to reverse the 2010 cuts, from the perspective of the majority education union, this pact does not fulfill that promise. According to its joint statement signed together with the Intersindical, ASPEPC, the CGT and FEUSOC, the government fails to fulfill its commitment to reverse all cuts during this legislature.
In particular, they refer to the reduction of two teaching hours for teachers over 55 years of age. Although the agreement mentions this aspect, it places it as an objective to be addressed in the next legislature. In addition, the need to equate the salary of technical vocational training teachers with that of other teachers is mentioned, leaving out a large part of the group, especially the interim ones.
Linking the agreement to the budgets
One of the points that generates discomfort in USTEC is the dependence of the agreement on the approval of the Generalitat’s budgets for the year 2024. If progress is not achieved in the talks, the agreed points to reverse the cuts would remain in limbo. .
According to Iolanda Segura, without a solid political commitment backed by the budgets, all promises will remain empty. In addition, she highlights the lack of addressing problems such as the reduction of ratios in classrooms. These reasons have led USTEC to completely disassociate itself from the pact with Education.
