More than 20 000 teachers took part in the warning strike in Hungary

Less than 20 percent of the country’s teachers participated in a warning strike called by trade unions for Monday morning, the human resources ministry told MTI.

The two-hour strike was held to call for higher wages and reduced workload.

The ministry called it “regrettable” that the trade unions had gone ahead with their strike plans despite the “absence of legal conditions”. It argued that the strike action had been based on a non-binding court ruling rather than a ruling that was already in force.

The ministry on Saturday told unions that the strike would be illegal as the Jan. 28 court ruling on the matter was not final. It is only lawful to hold a strike in Hungary in possession of a final court ruling on the matter.

Representatives of the teachers’ unions PDSZ and PSZ told a joint press conference on Monday that preliminary data showed participation by over 20,000 teachers in the strike which they called “a feast of democracy in Hungarian education”.

“We can be proud of our teachers who set an example”, they said, adding that “no matter how immense the pressure by the government was to thwart this strike it still went ahead”.

Zsuzsa Szabo, the chair of PSZ, said that those who participated in the strike called attention to the serious problem of many teachers leaving their profession. “If this trend continues there will soon be nobody in schools to teach our children who then will have no future, as much as this society will have no future either,” she said.

Erzsebet Nagy, an official of PDSZ, said the government had “exerted unprecedented pressure on teachers and parents as well” during the strike.

“There were schools where whole delegations of education supervisors appeared to threaten those participating in the strike and attempted to persuade teachers to return to their classes”, she said.

Commenting on the human resources ministry’s calling the strike illegal, Nagy said the government had not submitted any appeal against the non-binding ruling until 10am, the end of today’s strike. “This strike went to show not only the original reasons but the way the right to strike and democracy stand today in Hungary”, said Nagy.