Forty workers at the ESHOB cooking school will be laid off by the end of July.

BarcelonaThere are nerves and confusion. The ESHOB teaching staff and management, made up of forty people, will be out of work at the end of July because the publicly owned Barcelona Institute of Gastronomy and Restoration will open in the same space on September 1st. Just as the school celebrates forty years since its founding, the two guilds that created the private school, the Restaurant and Hotel Associations, have sold their facilities to the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government). "We know that the amount paid by the Generalitat is very high, and we find it even more outrageous that they didn't take us into account," explains the spokesperson for the teaching staff, who wishes to remain anonymous.

According to the ESHOB spokesperson, they have been assured compensation and recommended that they register for the school's teaching staff pool so they can begin working as teachers in public schools. "Since we come from private schools, we'll have little experience over the years, so it won't be easy to get a job as a public school teacher," he continues.

Meeting with families

The teaching staff and administration held a meeting with the families of the 300 enrolled students, who received the news with dismay. "Families lose the pedagogical continuity of students who trust in a team with experience, commitment, and vocation. That's why we wonder how the Education Consortium can talk about continuity in educational excellence if it doesn't count on the people who have been the cornerstone of the educational project?" they question.

Although in other educational centers that have gone through similar processes, such as the Antoni Algueró Institute, the teacher spokesperson points out that the former teachers have been included in the new stages, in the case of ESHOB this is not the case. For this reason, the teachers have expressed their displeasure to the Education Consortium and, above all, are asking why they will not be able to return to work as they do every September starting September 1st.