Portugal Teachers’ Unions to Strike During Parliament Session

Students gathering at a student festival in Braga, Portugal, in 2019. Schools have needed to intermittently close as a result of union strikes. (Wikimedia Commons)

Two of Portugal’s predominant teachers’ unions, the National Federation of Teachers (FENPROF) and the National Federation of Education (FNE), announced on October 20 that a nationwide teacher strike will take place on November 5. Planning the strike for November 5 is no accident. On that day, Portugal’s Minister of Education, Tiago Brando Rodrigues, will be in parliament debating the proposed State Budget for 2022.

The Association of Licensed Teachers and the National Union of Education Professionals, two smaller unions, will also be joining FENPROF and FNE in the upcoming strike.

Portugal has the oldest average teacher population out of the OECD member countries, with 40 percent of teachers from primary to upper secondary education being 50 years or older. Throughout the 21st century, this aging population has rapidly increased, with only 1 percent of Portugal’s teachers being under 30 years old, compared to 16 percent in 2005.

This strike will be one of several teachers’ strikes in the 2021-2022 school year alone. On September 15, which marked the week compulsory education began in Portugal, teachers and non-teaching staff participated in a week-long strike to protest the planned municipalization of education in Portugal in 2022, a process in which schools and their assets will be transferred to public ownership by municipalities across the country.

On October 5, another national teachers’ strike was underway, prompting the closure of dozens of schools throughout the country. Júlia Azevedo, president of the Independent Teachers and Educators Union (SIPE), said, “We hope that the Ministry of Education realizes that it is necessary to resume [funding and budget] negotiations, which is our main demand. The absence of answers to the teachers’ demands and of an opening to dialogue by the ministry has been going on for two years now.”

As Portugal’s budget currently undergoes debates in parliament, teachers and their unions seek greater state funding for salaries, facilities, and school programs—priorities that FENPROF states in its call for the upcoming strike.

Furthermore, FENPROF expresses concern regarding the marked decrease in the number of teachers across the country, especially for primary and secondary school students, and associates this decrease with lackluster retirement support, slim on-the-job benefits, abuses affecting working hours, and poor working conditions. As a result of the lack of teachers, student-teacher ratios are high, causing teachers to be overworked and underpaid while students receive less direct attention and mentorship from teachers, which would be beneficial to their education.

FENPROF Secretary-General Mário Nogueira said he hopes that the government will “start providing solutions to problems that affect many teachers, problems that are driving away many of the younger professionals” interested in teaching in Portugal.