We are all teachers!

The government’s attack on the rights and needs of the working people is targeting education. Students and teachers are sacrificed in order to repay the bankers and creditors and protect business profits.

The wretched tripartite government and the Troika aim to slash public spending for Education. They vote emergency laws limiting the number of teachers in the public schools.

They close thousands of schools across the country they cancel thousands of core teaching positions, they increase student numbers per class, they stop appointing teachers, and dismiss 10,000 fixed term teachers, they introduce the forced movement of teachers. They introduce “evaluation”-manipulation and increased teaching hours. They want the creation of a “flexible” teacher in the public and private sector that will lead to redundancies.

The government is preparing new laws for the General and Technical High School, forcing schools to operate using business criteria. It turns students into customers and headmasters into managers. The essential knowledge is to be replaced by partial information and skills and teaching by continuous testing and barriers. This is why they attack teachers’ employment rights forcing them to move to remote areas for many years and only providing allowances instead of a salary.

Teachers facing this onslaught decided to fight for survival of public education and the teaching profession. The strike is for the support of public education, for the right of children to education and the future, is a strike for the right to dignity and hope. It is a small part in the people’s struggle to repel and topple of the government’s-EU-IMS social slaughterhouse. Its victory may be a step to rid all the people from the nightmare of memoranda of debt and anti-labor measures.

The teachers’ fight can be victorious only if it is supported by the working and young people! The government and the media blame teachers that they exploit the efforts and the agony of the students. But they are the ones who have created a school-exam/torture center while places in higher education are being reduced, schools are being closed, youth unemployment rises to 64% and migration soars. They do not have the right to talk about the anguish of the students and their families, those who destroy their dreams and future! The teachers’ strike is for all of us and so we are all on their side!

We urge the government to withdraw the authoritarian and unconstitutional civil mobilisation imposed on the teachers before they even decided to go on strike!

ReINFORM stands in the just struggle of teachers.

We fight along with them to defend the right to education, work and life and the right to fight for them.