Striking teachers surround Parliament

Striking teachers surrounded the Parliament building in Sofia yesterday. They formed a live chain around it in support of their claims. The protest continued until the arrival of Education Minister Daniel Vulchev and Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski to negotiate with teachers’ leaders. A joint letter by the Bulgarian Teachers’ Trade Union, the Independent Teachers’ Union and Union Education within the Labour Confederation Podkrepa stated "The minimal increase of the incomes of the Bulgarian teacher is insulting and does not correspond to the increased cost of living in the past three months of 2005". The letter was sent to Bulgaria’s President Georgi Parvanov, Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev and all chairmen of the parliamentary groups.

At a meeting between teachers’ leaders and government representatives that took place during the demonstration at the Parliament the teachers were made a new offer of a 4% increase of salaries in January and another of 6% in July, plus a third increase later next year "provided there are reserves".

This was rejected by the unions who said they could only reach agreement if the third increase was a specific figure to be paid in October. They said the strike would continue for their full claim of 15%.

Many members of the Bulgarian Parliament, and the Ministry of Education itself, had originally been prepared to support a 20% rise in teachers’ salaries. This was effectively halted by the intervention of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who demanded that national expenditure be kept below 40% of GDP. At the same time as the teachers were holding their protest the IMF mission to Bulgaria issued a statement expressing its satisfaction with the draft budget bill for 2006 now under discussion in Parliament. This draft budget cuts education and health spending and has been denounced by the unions and some MPs as failing to address the most serious problems in Bulgarian society. The Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov has himself called on Parliament to prioritise education as a central issue for the future development of Bulgaria.

James Roaf, the IMF’s representative to Bulgaria, expressed his satisfaction with the results of an "unofficial" IMF mission that has been meeting with the Bulgarian government as a background to the teachers’ strike. He said the meetings aimed "to focus attention on fiscal policy in the budget framework for the coming year".

He added: "I believe the mission was successful from the point of view of defining priority tasks to be completed until the next mission of the IMF, probably in January 2006". It is expected that Bulgaria will then sign a new agreement with the international finance institution.

Hans Flickenshild, the head of this IMF mission publicly called for the number of teachers and schools in Bulgaria to be cut back and for the government to stand firm against the teachers’ demands or "it would be bombarded with similar claims from other sectors as well".