Algerian unions plan November protests

2009-11-03

Unions representing Algeria's educators and public health workers will hit the streets starting November 8th to voice demands for a better and retroactively-applied pay scale.

By Mouna Sadek for Magharebia in Algiers – 03/11/09

[File] Labour leaders in Algeria are calling for strikes in the country's health and education sectors.

Algeria's teachers and health care providers are planning an open-ended round of strikes starting Sunday (November 8th) as they seek improvements to public-sector pay scales.

The National Union of Education and Training Workers (UNPEF), which represents educators at secondary, technical and high schools, and the National Council of Secondary and Technical College Teachers (CNAPEST) have called for simultaneous and possibly prolonged walk-outs.

In the face of organised labour's challenge, Minister of Education Aboubakeur Benbouzid said on October 29th that he was "prepared to talk to teachers to find an honourable way out of the crisis" and "ready to talk to achieve results like salary increases".

Asked about the issue on October 28th, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said Algeria was doing its best to improve purchasing power through salaries, subsidies and low-interest housing loans, but he declined to comment on the strike announcements.

For his part, Minister of Labour Tayeb Louh announced the same day that a three-way meeting among government, business and the union leaders should take place before mid-December to look at the issue of public-sector wages.

Unions representing the workers are calling for a "decent" pay scale, to be backdated to January 2008. To achieve this goal, individual unions and labour federations are taking varied approaches. The Council of Algerian High Schools, for example, has called on its members to stop work "indefinitely" starting November 9th. The National Union of Public Health Workers, meanwhile, is opting for rolling national strikes for three days a week, beginning December 1st.

The unions' main demand is for a "decent" pay scale, to be backdated to January 2008. Labour leaders are particularly concerned about instructions issued by the prime minister, which they believe call into question the whole issue of pay scale retroactivity.

In 2007, after many years of stand-offs with the unions, the Algerian government agreed to review the special status and allowances payable to workers in the public sector. This review awakened great hopes among health and education workers.

But the prime minister's recent instructions on reviewing the pay scales have proved somewhat explosive. The controversy centres on the stipulation that the allowance systems for various public-sector bodies will date from when they were published in the government's official journal, and not January 1st, 2008, as was originally planned.

"We see this as a betrayal by the authorities, and we are demanding that the prime minister think again, because this is damaging to the whole credibility of the State and the promises it has made," a UNPEF spokesperson said at a press conference on October 25th in Algiers. "The government made a promise on this issue, so it must keep its promise."

In the run-up to the three-way talks, independent unions seem to be losing patience, and are complaining about being excluded from the negotiations. "There's no point in agreeing on increases if they're going to be held back or swallowed up by increases in consumer prices," said the UNPEF spokesperson.

Nevertheless, union leaders have declared themselves open to dialogue. "We're ready to talk and work together to ensure that public-sector workers' demands are given proper consideration," a spokesperson of the National Union of Public Health Workers told Magharebia.

Many rank-and-file union members are offering support to the planned protests. One 20-year veteran of the school system stated that she would "fully" observe the strikes. "If we hadn't fought for a review of the pay scales in 2003, we'd have gotten nothing," she said.

"Today, we need to hold firm, because it's the future of schools that's at stake," she told Magharebia, adding that "a fulfilled teacher will give all they can for their pupils".