Four weeks ago, when negotiations in the sector committee were still ongoing, Ecolo MP Andreas Jerusalem raised the issue for the first time in Committee III. Now he wanted to know what the teaching staff had to prepare for. “I would like to say at the outset that we do not agree that there will be cuts in teaching staff.”
“There is an acute shortage of teachers and the government is constantly talking about upgrading the teaching profession. However, it is cutting teachers’ salaries. We find this very difficult to understand. The same is true for public sector staff. We are of the same opinion here “that savings must be avoided,” said Jerusalem.
It is now clear that these savings should be achieved by suspending the variable part of the year-end bonus from 2025, “until further notice”, as CSP Education Minister Jérôme Franssen explained in the committee. “This decision was taken after several rounds of negotiations in the Sector Committee, the negotiating body for the civil service and education, after two out of three trade union organizations agreed to maintain social peace on this basis. This means not organizing strike action.”
Franssen’s party colleague Steffi Pauels supported her minister when she insisted “that we now take responsibility to stabilize the situation described by discussing austerity measures. It is clear that this also entails unpleasant decisions. It would be specious claim that it would work without it.”
As expected, Alain Mertes from Vivant took a harsher stance against the government. “I can very well understand the frustration of public service employees and teachers. That does not detract from our statement that increasing efficiency in the public service or in education is possible and necessary. But these austerity measures are also the result of budget policy the last decades of government in the German-speaking community.”
For her part, SP MP Kirsten Neycken-Bartholemy asked herself “how one can speak of a socially acceptable solution if around 70 percent of the variable part of the end-year bonus is canceled. In my opinion, this does not contribute to the upgrading of the various professional groups, because “However, salary always plays a role and for some of those affected this also means tightening their belts because they are dependent on this year-end bonus.”
Neycken-Bartholemy also did not see the new scope promised by the government and unions emerging “in the near future”. She agreed with Andreas Jerusalem that the staff members now affected should not be additionally affected by austerity measures at the federal level.
“So I can only emphasize once again that if such demands come from the federal state and these should be added on top, it would be far too easy for me to say: We have made savings here, now the others are joining in. No, In that case, in my opinion, you clearly have to sit down again and reassess how the situation is changing, because otherwise it is far too easy to pass the buck to the other person because you reacted quickly,” says Jerusalem .
Stephan Pesch
