Teachers unions move closer to walkouts

The votes in separate assemblies are binding for some 45,000 teachers and came less than a week before roughly 500,000 students are due back in class for the new academic year at nearly 1,500 public schools around the island.

Teachers Federation delegates approved a vote Friday to stage a one-day work stoppage at the island’s public schools next month.

The Teachers Association, the other main union at the Education Department, voted against a 24-hour stoppage at the start of the semester, but did approve a plan to launch an indefinite walkout of the public schools.

Gov. Luis Fortuño touched on the educator unrest during an inspection of an elementary school in Old San Juan on Friday.

“Any teacher who doesn’t report for work is letting the students down and won’t be paid for that day,” Fortuño said, adding that he would appoint an Education Department secretary before classes resume next Wednesday.

The concerns of both unions center on the Education Department’s decision to extend classes from 50 minutes to an hour, growing class sizes and the bumping of teachers to “non-exempt” positions not covered by union shields.

The 24-hour Teachers Federation strike is intended as a display of teachers’ discontent with the “the government’s trampling offensive against public education,” the union said in a statement issued by Teachers Federation President Rafael Feliciano.

More than 200 delegates from schools around the island unanimously cleared the strike vote recommended by the union’s governing board.

“The attack has been focused on intensifying the work day through the imposition of class periods of 60 minutes and the elimination of the free period,” Feliciano said.

The union leader said “new tasks” have been assigned to teachers that have led to larger class sizes.

“The reduction of teachers and increased class sizes has meant a reduction in academic offerings,” he said, citing fine arts, physical education, health, advanced courses, industrial arts, home economics and agriculture.

“Management has created a climate of job insecurity and persecution against teachers” by declaring many of them exempt employees and arbitrarily transferring hundreds of them, according to Feliciano.

Teachers Association President Aida Díaz ratcheted up the rhetoric even further.

“So the governor says he’s tired of strikes, well we’re going to give him a strike,” Díaz said.

She was referring to comments made a day earlier by Gov. Luis Fortuño that the public is weary of strikes and marches that appear to lack justification.

Before an all-out strike is launched, Teachers Association members would meet with public school parents and students to state their case, Díaz said.

She added that the Teachers Association would reach out to the rival Teachers Federation to give more weight to the walkout.

Díaz expressed confidence that Feliciano would get on board.

The Teachers Federation was decertified by the Labor Relations Commission two years ago for holding an illegal strike, which is expressly prohibited in Law 45 governing unionized public workers. The Teachers Federation walked out for several weeks in February 2008. Although the Teachers Association did not declare a strike, the public school system was virtually paralyzed.