Four weeks have passed since the students of 5,800 public schools are without receiving classesas a result of the permanent assembly that keeps teachers affiliated with the Union of Guatemalan Workers and Education Workers (Steg) away from the classrooms, since last May 19.
Pablo Guerra, Citizen Training Coordinator of the National Civic Movement (MCN), indicates in an interview that protests constitute a political war between trade unionists and Mineduc; However, those who remain in the middle are the students, and the impact will be in the long term, since the actions of fact affect the educational quality and could lead to school dropout.
What is your opinion for the suspension of classes in more than 5,000 schools, by the permanent assembly of the Steg?
It is definitely negative that they are in permanent assembly, a concept that does not exist within labor law. These are measures following the 5% salary increase announced by the Ministry of Education, which is a totally political action and that lacks technical foundation: reward the merit of the teachers. Moreover, a political measure to disrupt the power of Joviel Acevedo, and this leads to teachers being planted in the central square, and, in the end, who is responsible for those lost learning days of children?
There is definitely a conflict of interest. It is a struggle of power that should not be in discussion, because the power was delegated to the authorities, which must be the governing body of education.
The Steg ensures that unemployment will continue. What do you think?
It’s worrying. I understand that there are processes initiated for 6 thousand teachers who are not in their educational centers. It is also worrying how teachers are being used in this power struggle between Joviel Acevedo and the Ministry of Education; He is armored.
We have found in the collective pact that there is a privilege granted to Acevedo after it was dismissed by María del Carmen Aceña. With that antecedent, he realized that he needed to shield himself, because it was very easy to dismiss him, and with the next government, that of the UNE, he negotiated his immobility, which is in the current collective pact.
This union immobility does not protect the 6 thousand professors to whom the Ministry has already initiated a disciplinary process; It protects only Acevedo and the other union leaders, because, while they are in the positions, they cannot initiate an internal administrative or dismissal process.
Unfortunately, Teachers do not realize that they are instrumentalizing thembecause they are going to start an administrative process, while Acevedo has them in their struggle for their share of power.
What impact will this have on education?
There are videos on social networks where teachers are dancing in the central square, while children are not receiving neither didactic guides nor is there supervisory of their learning. They are losing class days, and this definitely delays the country, lowers the standards, lowers the quality and uploads the percentage of school dropout, a problem that Guatemala has at the basic and diversified level.
A child or a teenager who has no incentives, who does not see his teacher in the class, prefers to go to work with his parents to the field, prefers to leave school. But we do not see the repercussions, when there are already judicial orders that allow the Ministry of Education to initiate administrative processes. This is worrying, and the question we should ask ourselves is: who is sending in Guatemala’s education? For more than two decades, it seems that Joviel Acevedo has been.
As MCN presented an appeal for amparo and one of unconstitutionality, before the Supreme Court of Justice and the Constitutional Court, so that the project of the collective pact of the Magisterium is made public, but they have not been resolved. What do you expect to achieve with these actions?
No one has been able to leave a precedent, and that is why in the MCN we seek to sit a jurisprudence and serve for other collective bargaining. There are many other negotiations that are also harmful to the state of Guatemala, but it is important to initiate and leave a precedent: that a resolution of the Supreme Court of Justice serves as an instrument to other citizens and that establishes that no collective bargaining is made under a guarantee of confidentiality.
🚨Ante the notification of the @CC_guatemala On the confidentiality of the Collective Education Pact, we communicate: pic.twitter.com/8lzedznrym
– National Civic Movement (@MCnguatemala) December 10, 2024
Do you mention that in this dispute between the Mineduc and the Steg the most affected are the children?
No one talks about children, of the lost days of class, the problems we are going to have in a year or in two. We come with the delay of the pandemic and we have not recovered from that low educational quality.
Guatemala needs quality education, not a collective pact designed to extort the State. That is the summary of everything we have seen with the National Civic Movement, which put the issue on the table and generated this avalanche of actions, both of the union and the Ministry of Education. But we do not see clarity in the actions, or forcefulness in the way of executing that faculty that the Ministry has.
There is talk that the Steg will allege the ILO violation of the acquired rights of the workers of the Magisterium. How could this affect Guatemala?
More than going for the ILO, the route to which the union could go, claiming the violation of any labor law, could be the Inter -American Commission on Human Rights or the Inter -American Court of Human Rights. However, this is the time to review what the alternatives are and what are the solutions to this problem, because the Labor Code, which regulates the relations between patron and employee, dates from the 40s. It is very old and was designed to regulate relationships between employer and employee in the private part. Now we need it with all these problems and with all collective unions and bargaining in the state of Guatemala.
It is time to regulate the union issue and collective bargaining through a law, that congressmen see this problem, that they get involved and begin to generate these proposals that feel a precedent about how collective bargaining should be. There is no regulation that establishes, for example, that in collective bargaining, the PDH, PGN, and that citizens can know what they are negotiating must be involved.
If that does not exist, they (the union) could legally act in a court, but that is where the State must have caution with the actions it takes and be overwhelmed with them, to adhere to law, and here the best interest of the child must prevail.
What remains to do to the Ministry of Education?
Here is a fight between the ministry and the union. We are looking for the collective pact to be public, doing it for citizens, but the child’s best interests should prevail, and nobody talks about it.
What the ministry could do is leave and talk about how many children are being affected by teachers in front of the square, be overwhelmed with their actions and present not only administrative actions, but criminal, for breach of duties.
They tell us that there are 6 thousand open administrative processes, but there is breach of duties and the right to education of hundreds of children is being violated. The state of Guatemala can say that it is doing it for very legitimate causes, and those actions would support it if, tomorrow, these gentlemen go to some international court.