According to the EMMI, "in every election campaign, the left pulls the strings of the teacher's unions and makes them take political action."Continue reading
Teachers’ unions PSZ and PDSZ reject the untrue allegations made by the EMMI, the two education unions said in a statement. The unions reacted to a statement by the Ministry of Human Resources, which they say is intended to make untrue claims against the unions.
The teachers’ unions reacted to a statement which we also reported about. In response to the teacher’s announcement about upcoming strikes, EMMI wrote in their statement that
It is clear that the teacher’s strikes announced for January and March are a campaign by the Left.”
According to the ministry, “in every election campaign, the left pulls the strings of the teacher’s unions and makes them take political action.” The EMMI said that union leaders “have asked for the January pay raise to be postponed, and have also rejected the government’s offer of a 200,000 forint cafeteria allowance, which shows that they are not seeking an agreement.” According to the ministry, teachers are also not consistent on the issue of vaccination.
The Teachers’ Trade Union (PSZ) and the Democratic Trade Union of Teachers (PDSZ) rejected claims that they were intervening in the election campaign, saying that it is the ministry which is politicizing the pay fight.
Neither the PDSZ nor the PSZ is or has ever been involved in electoral campaigning, nor is it affiliated with any political party.
“The Ministry of Human Resources, on the other hand, is turning the wage dispute — which László Kisfaludy, the Deputy State Secretary, also considers legitimate — into a party political issue, engaging in primitive mentions of [former Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc] Gyurcsány and recalling past events as if it had forgotten the actions of the trade unions against the education policy of previous governments,” the unions said. “The government starts to mention Gyurcsány when it cannot provide a meaningful and credible response to the shortage of teachers and the low and humiliating wages. The unions are only demanding what the Orbán government once gave in 2013 and took away in 2015. The government owes 17 months’ pay to all education workers since 2015,” they wrote.
According to the teachers’ unions, the EMMI is also misinforming the public about vaccinations when it claims that the unions are inconsistent about the coronavirus vaccination. “In the spring, when unions asked for public school workers at high risk of coronavirus infection to be put on the government’s priority list, the response was that teachers would wait their turn and receive the vaccination along with the rest of the population. Now the same government is making it compulsory to receive the vaccine, but only in public institutions. According to the government, the vaccination rate for teachers is over 90 percent, yet this is the occupational group that the government is targeting, even though many of the unvaccinated are recent or chronic sufferers who have a legitimate fear of receiving the vaccine.”
They argue that even colleagues who have recently had the disease are obliged to be vaccinated, even though medical advice says they should be vaccinated after a few months. The government is thus misinformed when it claims that the unions refuse to be vaccinated. It has been made clear that none of the unions involved in the strike negotiations are anti-vaxxers. The unions are attacking the ill-considered, half-hearted regulations on compulsory vaccination, in particular, the one that makes vaccination compulsory only in public schools and vocational training institutions, and not in church-run and private institutions. These regulations are unenforceable and will exacerbate an already dramatic shortage of specialists, the unions said.
Source: Magyar Hang
In the featured photo: Human Resources Minister Miklós Kásler. Photo by Koszticsák Szilárd/MTI
