Teacher assemblies overflow unions

BarcelonaIn the demonstration of the last strike of the school year and after the noin the consultation on the agreement with the Department of Education, one of the most repeated comments among teachers was that school assemblies should have a decisive role in negotiations with the Government. In fact, in the speeches at the end of the protest, the first to speak were the representatives of the educational assemblies and not the union spokespersons, as usual. Neither the comments nor the protagonists on stage are accidental: more than 500 school assemblies have been registered since the website of the Assembly of Education of Catalonia (AEC) opened in February. Furthermore, more than a hundred teachers attended the sixth AEC assembly held last weekend. the sixth AEC assembly held last weekend more than a hundred teachers attended.

, the spokesperson for USTEC, Iolanda Segura, explained that the union would consult its members to find out the teachers' "priorities"But what is behind these new ways of organizing? Teachers from various assemblies point to discontent over the pact between the Government and UGT and CCOO in March, as well as the preliminary agreement with the executive reached by USTEC and Professors of Secondary Education, which the majority union then put to a vote. Nevertheless, Jordi Mir, a doctor in humanities and professor at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), points out that the rise of these types of organizations is not new.

"When we study other cases of mobilization in a context comparable to the current one, what usually happens at the beginning is that unions have an important weight," explains Mir. If the mobilization develops "in a more or less standard labor conflict scenario," normally, the issue "stays within the union sphere." "But when the mobilization has significant growth and those involved in the protest consider that the unrest cannot be resolved with only minor changes, that's when the movement goes beyond the unions," describes the humanist.

Mir also explains that, in his opinion, the rise of teacher assemblies does not "necessarily have to be read as a delegitimization of the unions": "After the vote [of the pre-agreement with Education], the same USTEC spokespersons made a kind of self-criticism and said that they understood the result and would make a new plan," he defends. In fact, right after learning about the no, the USTEC spokesperson, Iolanda Segura, explained that the union would consult its members to find out the teachers' "priorities".

Beyond synergies (or lack thereof) with unions, the wave of new assemblies began at the start of this academic year. "Assemblies have been founded in each of the centers, which then organized ourselves into territorial assemblies, and then we saw the need to find a way to communicate among all of Catalonia to take the demands further," recalls Rodrigo, who insists that the AEC is only a way "to organize and channel" what the center assemblies want.

From not going out to stop evictions

One of these 500 assemblies is the Maresme-La Selva Assembly, the group that extended the initiative not to hold colonies and outings next year as a form of protest. An action to which 1,300 schools and institutes have already adhered. They explain that the initial idea came from centers in Tordera and Lleida, but it coincided with the rise of new assemblies everywhere and it was then that the Maresme group began to structure the campaign. A mobilization that, they insist, does not "question the pedagogical value" of these activities, but rather criticizes the fact that they are sustained "in large part thanks to the commitment and involvement of the teaching staff, without guaranteeing the necessary resources or legal and criminal coverage".

Beyond the protest actions, teacher platforms have also been created to defend other student rights. These are associations such as Docents 080, to protect students against evictions; Ciències en Perill, to demand the non-merger of sciences in baccalaureate; Docents de Filosofia to request an extra hour of the subject, or the platform Aules que Cremen. "It arises from tiredness and exhaustion," explains the creator of the initiative, Pau Sánchez, a teacher at a high school in Baix Llobregat. Together with his friend Octavi, they created an open-source system with which they can measure the temperature in schools and institutes using the boards that have the robotics kits that the Department of Education itself distributed to many centers three years ago. "We started with only four or five schools and now we are approaching 300 centers with 623 different devices, which allow us to measure thermal conditions in real-time in different classrooms," details Sánchez. Measurements that have shown how almost 200 centers exceeded 30 degrees in the last week of the school year.

The directors, too

Not only teachers have sought new ways to organize. Directors have too, although the trigger was different. "There had always been assemblies of school principals by districts, but we decided to get together when the summer assignments were modified and we saw that we would no longer be able to conduct interviews," they explain from the Assembly of Barcelona Directorates. They also explain that the unease, tension, and feeling of not being represented led to increased interest in the assembly from directorates in other parts of Catalonia. "We created a WhatsApp group for everyone, but it overwhelmed us," they recall. In this case, the surge translated into a resurgence of AXIA, the Professional Association of Educational Directors, which has already had a relevant voice in recent months. Now, from the assembly, they explain that the next step is to decide whether to create a union of directors to "have a direct line" with the Government.