few striking teachers, diving masks in the demonstrations

A strike little followed, but demonstrators with straw hats and diving masks, in an allusion to Ibiza, vacation spot of the Minister of National Education: teachers marched Thursday in France, a new day of action to protest against the management of the Covid-19 health crisis at school.

“Blanquer resignation, puppet protocol”, “Blanquer us + piss off +”, “Ibiza-gate” or even “Jean-Michel Guetta does not hear us!” (reference to DJ David Guetta, animator of the nights of Ibiza), could be read on signs in the Parisian demonstration, which joined the place of the Sorbonne to the ministry. Other rallies took place in several cities in France.

They were 750 people to participate in the demonstration in the capital, according to the Paris police headquarters. A week before, they were nearly 78,000 people to demonstrate in France, including 8,200 in Paris, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

After a very well-attended mobilization on January 13, education staff responded little to the strike call. The ministry counted only 1.15% of first degree teachers (kindergarten and elementary) and 2.18% in the second degree (college and high school).

Seven days earlier, they were more than 38% in the first degree and nearly 24% in the secondary, still according to the Ministry of Education. Nearly 78,000 people had marched in France at the call of all the unions, then indicated the Ministry of the Interior.

“Today we wanted to respond to the attitude of Jean-Michel Blanquer who allows himself to go to Ibiza on vacation while teachers in France are suffering”, “we want to insist on the fact that contempt is very real” , says Laura, a teacher specializing in rased (specialized support networks for students in difficulty) in 93, with sunglasses, hat, sarong and flower necklace around her neck.

A few steps away, a demonstrator wears a hat, mask, snorkel and flower necklace, with a sign around her neck: “Hands up, rabbit skin, Jean-Michel in a swimsuit”.

“Jean-Michel Guetta, minister in Ibiza, we don’t want to work for you anymore!”, sang about thirty teachers, with straw hats and diving masks, in front of the rectorate in Bordeaux.

– “Keep up the pressure” –

In Rennes, they were around sixty gathered in front of a banner “Blanquer resignation”. “If there is a reluctance from colleagues to strike (Thursday), everyone will be present on January 27,” assured Marc, 32, a teacher at a college in Fougères (Ille-et-Vilaine), referring at the interprofessional event scheduled for the end of January.

In recent days, some of the organizations (FSU, CGT Educ’action, FO and SUD Education, the FCPE, the first parents’ organization, and the high school student movements FIDL, MNL and La Voix lycéenne) had called for “continuing the mobilization”, committing “to a new day of action, including by strike”.

This is, once again, to protest against the waltz of health protocols in schools. For the unions and organizations which called for the strike on Thursday, “the chaos generated by the management of the health crisis deserves strong responses, beyond the commitments made” following the demonstration on January 13.

“The goal was not to redo the 13th, but to maintain the mobilization and the pressure, to show that the personnel are not fooled by the announcements and are preparing to succeed on January 27 with all the sectors”, explained to AFP Michael Marcilloux, co-secretary general of the CGT educ’action, in the Parisian procession.

After the mobilization of January 13, the unions had been received by Prime Minister Jean Castex and the Minister of Education, who had promised “five million FFP2 masks” for teachers and more replacements for absent teachers.

“Not sufficient” announcements for the unions, which called for “creating all the positions necessary to ensure replacements” and “providing schools and establishments with protective equipment in sufficient numbers, well beyond the volumes announced”.

After two years of “calamitous” management of the health crisis at school, according to many teachers, the exasperation is obvious. And Minister Blanquer, already weakened, had difficulty convincing this week after the revelation by Mediapart of his stay in Ibiza just before the start of the school year in January, when the health protocol in schools was being decided.

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