Teachers and Day-care Workers to Go On Strike this March

Both day-care providers and teachers throughout Estonia are scheduled to go on strike for one to three days this coming March.

Sven Rondik, head of Estonia’s Educational Personnel Union, said this Monday that the impending strike will start on Wednesday, March 7, and does not have an end date as of yet.    

The union’s website has stated that they are requesting a 20 percent increase for this year, and 15 percent increases in both next year’s salaries and those in 2014.

Lower level teachers’ gross monthly salaries would make quite a jump from 608 euro to 730 euro, while more senior level teachers would experience an increase from 899 euro to 1,067 euro.

To put all this in perspective, the average monthly wages in all of Estonia last fiscal quarter were right around 809 euros.

 The Educational Personnel Union has recently been criticizing the Estonian government for repeatedly freezing the country’s educator and day care salaries.

The group held protests at the Estonian Parliament in Tallinn this past October, right on the heels of a  big cabinet rejection to increase the budget for these types of salaries, despite Estonia’s accelerated growth in the European Union (the fastest of all of the 27 nations who are members of the European Union).

Authorities have continuously said that this year’s budget simply does not allow for such increases in wages. Sources have estimated a deficit of 2.1 percent gross domestic product for 2012.