Teacher Strike

For the last couple of weeks or so the teachers at many schools throughout the country have been on strike. The strike, as far as I can understand, is mainly over a 28 year old debt and teacher bonuses for this year. The 28 year old debt occurred when Pinochet reorganized the educational structure in the country. During this transition, some teacher's paychecks apparently went missing. The situation is complicated in that the government and the teacher's union do not agree on the size of debt or how much of the debt has been paid. Because this debt occurred 28 years ago, 2/3 of the teachers who are on strike probably weren't teaching when the debt happened. They probably participate out of the notion of solidarity, which is a celebrated ideal here, but it is possible that younger teachers also hope to receive something out of a settlement. (or just don't want to work). This strike apparently occurs almost annually in Chile. Also interesting to me is that some schools have declared that they will be on strike for the rest of the year. This begs the question how do they know a settlement won't be reached by the end of the year.

My school unfortunately is unaffected by the strike because I work at a semi-private school and thus if they teachers went on strike they'd probably be fired and replaced (teachers here also earn more money then in the public schools). So I've been teaching away. I've got 6 more days of classes so I'm pretty pumped to started my South American traveling.

teacher strike

So teachers throughout Chile have been on strike throughout the country. In Antofagasta, strikes have gone on for the last three weeks. Today, I finally received an email from English Opens doors explaining the situation. 

" the strike is the result of a bonus that teachers throughout the country were promised last year during a renegotiation of their contracts.  The government claims that it sent the bonus money out to the municipalities to be distributed to the teachers, but apparently the municipalities spent the money on other things without passing it along to the intended recipients."

Unfortunately, I still have school and classes because I work at semi-private school which has a different contract and I believe receive better pay, but other volunteers have had the days off. The interesting thing is that I haven't seen any stories about it on the television news ... not that I watch all that much news, but in the past couple of days I have seen news stories about a 3 and a half foot mom and a story about a family getting gastric by pass surgeries. 

Rumor is that the strike will end Wednesday or Thursday this week.