Teachers vote to carry on with university strike

POSDEP vows to stop reforms bill

University teachers voted yesterday to continue for a ninth week their protests against education reforms in a dispute that has already cost the government some –185 million according to Education Ministry sources.

The Panhellenic Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (POSDEP) put two proposals forward for its members to vote on. The first was the “continuation of action” and the other was “open universities with dialogue inside the universities.”

Union members voted to continue the strike that began in January with 94 votes in favor, 63 against and 32 abstentions.

The university teachers also voted by 149 votes to five to call for the government to retract its reforms bill, which POSDEP described as “undemocratic, unconstitutional and inapplicable.”

Lazaros Apekis, POSDEP’s president, said the teachers would keep protesting until MPs vote on the bill, which could be as early as this week. Teachers said that if the bill is voted into law, they could appeal to the Council of State, which is Greece’s highest administrative court.

The teachers’ decision follows one by students last week to continue their occupation of university departments. Teachers and students fear the draft law will lead to the end of free public education. They also claim the reforms will not solve the problems in Greece’s tertiary education system and that spending on universities should be increased.

Education Ministry sources told Sunday’s Kathimerini that the dispute has already cost more than –185 million if outlays such as teachers’ wages and universities’ operating costs are taken into account.

Sources also said that families who send their children to study at universities that are not in their hometown are also spending around –850 a month to keep them there while the protest continues.

Meanwhile, the president of the Academy of Athens, Panayiotis Vokotopoulos, told Kathimerini that he thinks the students’ behavior is unacceptable.

“The occupation is absurd,” said Vokotopoulos. “Of course students can protest and fight for their cause through democratic means but they cannot obstruct administrative staff from doing their job.”

Vokotopoulos worked as a university professor for 21 years before becoming the head of the non-government academic and scientific organization and he blamed the lack of consensus between the major political parties for creating the crisis in the education system.

“Each government does its own thing and the opposition rejects whatever the government proposes,” he said.