The Union of Educators of the Province of Córdoba (UEPC) resolved this Tuesday what was expected: abide by the mandatory conciliation issued by the Ministry of Labor.
The strategy of the provincial administration to ask for help from the portfolio led by Omar Sereno served on Monday to deactivate the three-day strike that the union had launched hours before. However, in a low voice, the parties agree that it will not be enough to unblock the conflict in the short term, the most extensive with this group of state officials since Juan Schiaretti is sitting in Bustos’ chair.
The result of the vote on Monday in the assembly was overwhelming: 18 departments out of 26 voted to reject the increase proposal and launch the unprecedented 72-hour force measure that was finally paused with the intervention of Labor.
“We will have to ask the leadership of the union what happened, because when they left here, the proposal seemed satisfactory to them and they understood that they would be able to convince the bases. The same thing happened to them three times,” replied a source from the Honeycomb who does not see a close solution because “there is not much else to offer.”
“The issue is that with each passing week inflation accelerates more and all the proposals are seen as poor,” he lamented.
In this sense, on Friday, INDEC will announce the consumer price index for March and the prospects are not encouraging.
All the consultancies that measure inflation speak of a rise of more than 7%, the highest in nine months of the national CPI.
In the union they also see that with each passing day the prices are escaping and any agreement is getting old. “In March, people did not have enough salary due to the enormous amount of expenses they had; there was no way to convince them, even knowing that they were going to deduct the days of unemployment”, acknowledged a school delegate trying to explain why in the vote on Monday, the vast majority of departmental representatives did not raise their hands to accept the proposal of salary increase.
“He does not recompose the salary in front of the basket and does not respect the seniority scale,” said Juan Monserrat, general secretary of the UEPC, upon learning of Sereno’s opinion.
tactical error
Some in the Government say that there was a strategic error in the negotiation, when applying an advance of 10% on the salary in March, since this increase “disguised” the discount for the first days of unemployment and strengthened the idea of rejecting the proposal and stop again.
The bases, for their part, with the self-summoned and the opposition to the leadership of the union as referents, explain that the cause of the refusal to sign must be sought in inflation.
It must be remembered that food in Córdoba increased 12% in February, with beef rising almost 25% that month. In March, in addition, chicken, another key product that impacts the pocket of wage earners, skyrocketed.
The Minister of Education of Córdoba, Walter Grahovac, said on Tuesday that the conciliation “should not be understood as a postponement but as a time to speed up the negotiation process.”
“We have to look for new alternatives, we must continue exploring a sustainable way of meeting a demand that is having difficulties within the union. We have the obligation to find a way out and our vocation is not to exhaust the obligatory conciliation”, she expressed.
“We are going to try to find a way out. We need schools to recover a climate of attention to children, we have to support the work of teachers and their families, ”she added.
As follows
This week, the parties will meet again to begin to outline an agreement. Until the afternoon of this Tuesday, Labor had not set a time and date, but it would be between Wednesday and Thursday.
The Government wants to resolve it as soon as possible because the start of the campaign for the June 25 elections is getting closer.
There is also a rush to put an end to the problem because most of the state and provincial governments have not yet signed. So far, only Viales and the Union of Superior Personnel (UPS) have agreed.
The SEP, the largest in number of people, is waiting to see what the teachers achieve.