Strike in education: New big protest rally of teachers in Bucharest. What did President Iohannis promise?

The education strike continued today as well, with more than 20,000 teachers and trade union members staging  a new big protest rally in Bucharest on Tuesday.

Many teachers from other counties arrived in the Capital by bus. The protesters met around 11:00 a.m. in Piața Victoriei, in front of the Government, from where they left around 3:00 p.m. to the Cotroceni Palace.

“We don’t give in, bad luck!”. The union leaders had, also today, new talks with Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă, at ​​the end of which they announced that they will continue the strike, because the Executive refuses to increase their salaries. After the demonstrators arrived in Cotroceni, President Klaus Iohannis received the union leaders for discussions, at their request.

At the end of the talks, the unions announced that Iohannis had offered to broker an agreement with the government: “On Wednesday, the strike continues, and people will decide what to do next.”

The Presidential Administration said in a press release, that the president “expressed his full willingness to guarantee, as a mediator between the representatives of the unions and the Government of Romania, the conclusion of a political agreement in order to resolve the salary claims and thus obtain a consensus that allows the resumption of the educational process as quickly as possible”.

Meanwhile there were also discussions at the government among the three leaders of the  ruling coalition – Nicolae Ciucă, Marcel Ciolacu, Kelemen Hunor – regarding the strike in education and the salary law.

The government announced on the website that from 12 o’clock there will be consultations with the representatives of the education unions. The leader of the Spiru Haret Federation, Marius Nistor, told Digi24 that the trade unionists did not receive any invitation to the talks. “Which negotiations?” asked the trade union leader.

“My colleagues want a 25% increase in income, they do not accept such an option (vouchers). The more the decision-making is postponed, the more radical the actions and the more the expectations will increase”, said Marius Nistor.

Asked if they will go to negotiations when they receive the official invitation, the union leader replied: “Do they have something concrete, something new? If we continue the discussion in the same direction, unfortunately… (…) The Prime Minister knows what meeting he has, we don’t know anything (…) And from what I saw, they didn’t understand anything.”

The government announced that from 12:00 PM Nicolae Ciucă will meet with the trade union leaders in education at the Victoria Palace, and from 3:00 PM with the leaders of Sanitas.

The representatives of the education unions had a series of negotiations with the Ministers of Labor and Education on Monday, without having a solution to their demands. They proposed to the Minister of Labor a new salary increase option until the end of the year, by which the ranking coefficient 1 would be multiplied by 3,000 lei, which is the minimum wage in the economy, and they said that they are waiting for “a signal from the the Government”.

At the same time, the trade union leaders stressed they won’t give up the protest march scheduled for Tuesday, from Victoriei Square to the Cotroceni Palace, and asked the President of Romania to have a meeting with the leaders of the three trade union federations to mediate this conflict that broke out between education employees and the Government of Romania.