The ministry said that the trade unions had held the strike without fulfilling the required legal conditions. The strike was based on a non-binding court ruling rather than a ruling that was already in force, a requirement under Hungarian law, it said.
Representatives of the teachers’ unions PDSZ and PSZ told a joint press conference that more than 20,000 teachers participated in the strike, according to preliminary data. The unions want teachers’ salaries to linked to the current minimum wage. They are also calling for an increase in the salaries of people working in education who aren’t teachers. They also want the number of hours of classroom instruction to be capped at 22 a week, and they want teaching assistants’ hours reduced. Erzsébet Nagy of PDSZ said the government had not appealed the ruling until 10am, the end of today’s strike. PSZ chair Zsuzsa Szabó said the strike raised awareness of „teachers leaving the profession in droves”. Szabó said that the unions planned a general strike for March 16 if no agreement was reached.
hungarymatters.hu
pixabay
