Hungarian teacher union: No reason to be satisfied with sector pay hikes

Budapest, November 18 (MTI) – Teachers’ trade union PDSZ on Friday said there was “no reason to be satisfied” with the wage hikes that have been implemented so far in the education sector.

The wage hikes government office chief János Lázár described on Thursday as “the biggest of the last 30 years” lower as those implemented by the Socialist government in 2002, PDSZ chairman László Mendrey told a press conference.

Mendrey said the government had used a “clever trick” to divide a wage increase they had promised would be a one-time hike at the time of the introduction of the teacher career model in 2013 into four stages. As a result, the 10 percent wage increase the government had promised turned out to be a monthly net wage increase of 3.5-5.0 percent worth 5,000-9,000 forints (EUR 16-29), he said.

Further, the government failed to mention that the pay hikes come with a 30-40 percent increase in the workload of teachers, Mendrey said. On average, teachers now work more than 60 hours a week, he added.

Mendrey also expressed disappointment with the government’s planned minimum wage increase, saying that the wages of teaching assistants had stagnated since 2008. The government is promising a pay hike of 7-10 percent for teaching assistants but they stand to lose their fringe benefits, he said.

Mendrey said another reason why teachers could not be satisfied with the state of the education sector was that the teacher protests of last autumn and this past spring had turned out to be ineffective.

Source: MTI