Hungarian News

Pupils and Teachers

• March 17, 2022
• István
• 30 Comments

Both pupils and teachers sided yesterday. After the teacher’s strike in January only resulted in an attack to be a leftist campaign action, while in fact a basic-school teacher never in his professional life will be paid as well as an unskilled worker in the warehouses of a retail company from his very 1st day. I had several figures to compare already ►EN. So it doesn’t surprise that many teacher leave the job and hardly anybody takes the effort to study now for 5 years (recently reduced from 6 years) to become teacher. This ridiculous low payment of teachers forms not only a threat to those who are teaching today, but will make this an extincting profession if things won’t be changed radically both regarding payment and ideological limitations. Since Hungarian education is already at least problematic even less education will result in an increasingly chanceless generation to come.

Government made some vague promises for future payments past the elections, but did not make any concrete offers to the teachers. So teachers started a strike yesterday. To make it worse the government limited the right to strike further. After already before the rules determined that children must be supervised at schools during a strike. Now under the pretext of the pandemic the teachers have been ordered to teach as well for half the time. This made teachers at a school to declare strike not for 3 days as planned, but for 6 days instead, while they wouldn’t teach the 1st 3 days at all ►HU.

Already before some teachers employed civil disobedience, since their right to strike was limited too much. They just did not work for an amount of hours, since weeks, within different schools, places, and amount of hours. According to telex during the first month of civil disobedience no teacher has been fired ►HU. Obviously Orbán does not want to escalate this, while we shouldn’t forget that he is no friend of workers unions. In his early days he refused to meet with representatives of the police union with the words that he doesn’t meet with clowns. With the elections on the doorstep the regime does not want more problems.

Yesterday not only teachers demonstrated during their strike, but also pupils held demonstrations in favour of their teachers. In front of parliament building pupils called for treating their teachers well, since they understood that good teachers are their only chance getting a good education and that education is the key to their own future. In opposite to the “peace” march the regime organised a day before Magyar Hang called this the march of the grandchildren ►HU. Quite obviously times are over that the egoism of the regime is the example for the youth. No “me first.” Orbán succeeded to create from teachers and pupils a social unit standing up for each other.

While the regime remained pretty silent in advance the authorities, the school directing Klebelsberg institute and the schools reacted, although not following a single line. Some schools asked the parents to keep the children at home if possible, others organised a “non-teaching work day”, again ordered teachers to show up for work ►HU.

While Unity for Hungary is siding with the teachers for their right to strike and for an adequate payment as well since long, they want a 50 % salary increase to close the huge gap that grew under Orbán, the minister of the prime minister’s office Gulyás yesterday tried to calm the situation. He promised 10 % wage increase for each of next 3 years. Right now 10 % would just be hardly above official inflation and way below the inflation of food prices. But even this comparison sounds better than it is. A significant part of the teachers’ income is not declared wage, but surcharge. This was also the trap of the great increase Orbán announced last year, which sounds so much better than it was. The starting wage for all teachers is as today just below minimum wage! The minimum wage for unskilled and least educated employees, not that one that applies to the better-educated employees. This means Gulyás offered a starting teacher a monthly nets increase of less than 35 € for each of the years 2023 – 2025!

To make it worse Gulyás called the EU to be the culprit. He said that in Brussels would be negotiated about the next 7-years-budget and from that money the teachers’ payment would depend. To put it right: The next 7-years-budget will start in 2028! On January 1st, 2021 the current one started and will last until December 31st, 2027. And teachers have never been paid from the EU budget. Perhaps school buildings can be renovated with EU funds, but definitely not teachers paid. They pay for development of a country, for better infrastructure, but not for the costs running the state. EU blaming again instead of solving the problems the Orbán regime has created through the years ►HU.