Teachers react to call for longer hours
A proposal by Education Minister Aristides Baltas for school teachers to work an additional two hours per week to offset short-staffing on Wednesday fueled an angry response from educators who claim they have suffered enough from years of austerity.
“We will oppose any discussion about managing the acute problems of education by hurting teachers’ labor rights,” the secondary school teachers’ union (OLME) said in a statement.
Members of the union told Kathimerini that teachers have been hard hit by cutbacks and can ill afford to strike. However, a further increase in working hours is intolerable, they said.
OLME complained that Baltas has refused to hire both full-time and substitute teachers, pushing the burden onto workers by calling on them to work more hours.