While the farmers’ protests do not weaken, the main teachers’ unions have called a strike this Thursday, February 1, 2024. The FSU-SNUipp expects an “average of 40% of strikers in the territory”.
Anger continues to spread in France this Thursday, February 1. The farmers’ crisis which began more than a week ago continues and even reached Brussels this Thursday. At the same time, several snail taxi operations were organized in different large cities this Monday, before liberal nurses also undertook similar actions this Wednesday. A crisis that is globalizing and that government announcements are struggling to calm. This Thursday, February 1, 2024, the movement is expanding with a nationwide teachers’ strike organized by the main teaching unions. If the strikers have a long list of demands, they have chosen to highlight working conditions as well as wages.
From Lille to Marseille, via Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Toulouse, numerous processions will set off throughout the day. The press release from the FSU-SNUipp, the main union of primary school teachers, specifies that with “65% of strikers in Paris, more than 50% in Val-de-Marne, Drôme, Ardèche and even in the Pyrenees- Atlantic, the mobilization is very strong in certain departments.
In the capital, demonstrators met at 2 p.m. They will leave Luxembourg, in the 6th arrondissement, heading to the Ministry of National Education, located in the 7th arrondissement rue de Grenelle. While school teachers must send their declaration of intention to strike 48 hours before the mobilization, the main primary teachers’ union, FSU-SNUipp, was able to estimate the rate on Tuesday at around 40%. of striking teachers in France on February 1.
If it seems certain that many teachers and secondary schools have decided to participate in the movement, we will have to wait a little longer to find out more, the exact number of strikers can only be known this Thursday at midday. FSU, CGT, FO, SUD-Education, Unsa-Education, SGEN-CFDT, the vast majority of teaching unions have in any case called for mobilization. High schools should be blocked in several cities this Thursday, such as the Balzac high school in Tours according to France Blue. Near West FranceGwenn Thomas-Alves, spokesperson for the High School Union (USL), indicated that “several dozen high schools” should be mobilized “in the Paris region, in Rhône-Alpes, certainly in Ille-et-Vilaine, in Bouches-du-Rhône, Clermont-Ferrand, Tours… “
Emergency measures requested
Faced with a “deaf” government, the FSU-SNUipp indicates in its press release that it specifically wants to warn about “the suffering at work as well as the lack of recognition, particularly in salary” and on the “working conditions, for staff, and of learning, for students, [qui] have deteriorated”. In a press release from the inter-union made up of the Sud education, Unsa education, FSU, Sgen-CFDT and CGT education federations, the demands are more precise: “We demand in particular emergency measures: revaluation without compensation of personnel articulated around immediate measures and a multi-year programming law, abandonment of the Pact, creation of a category B civil servant status for AESH and improvement of working conditions, in particular by reducing the number of classes and a multi-year recruitment plan.”
Some teachers also point to the reforms announced by the Ministry of National Education in October. “The clash of knowledge proposed by Gabriel Attal is unrealizable. And then, we have a great loss of educational freedom with the fact of imposing on us ready-made methods which do not take into account our situation”, believes in particular a French teacher and of history-geography of Besançon, interviewed by France 3. And to continue: “The level groups in mathematics and French in middle school are an aberration. It will be to the detriment of the students. Putting the good with the good and the bad with the bad, that has never nothing given.”
The recent appointment of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra to the Ministry of National Education is also criticized by the unions, who deplore the various blunders committed by the new minister. Shortly after her appointment, she notably justified the schooling of her children in the private sector by deploring the “packages of hours which were not seriously replaced” in the public sector.