Biggest Salvadoran Teachers Trade Union Rejects Strike

San Salvador, Apr 23 (Prensa Latina) The National Association of Salvadoran Teachers (Andes June 21, or Andes 21) rejected a strike summoned for today and tomorrow by another trade union, an accuse that organization of trying to destabilize the goverment.

Andes 21 general secretary, Israel Montano, informed that there are no reasons to leave the negotiation table with the authorities, a step given by the main leader of the other trade union, call Bases Magisteriales, Luis Mario López, he said.

Montano remembered that the government agreed to a salary increase of 6 and 10 percent starting from the second semester of 2011 and that it will pay retroactively, in this month and in July, the corresponding salaries of the first six months of that year.

He added that during the dialogue with the government increases of 5 and 7 percent to the teachers in the years 2013 and 2014.

He specified that in each one of those years, the salary increase will mean an increment of the budget of 38.2 million dollars.

The Andes 21 union leader also assured that López and the leadership of Bases Magisteriales try to destabilize the National Liberation Farabundo Martí Front (FMLN) and one of their historical leaders, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, vice-president and Minister ad honorem of Education.

Consulted by journalists at the end of an inaugural act of the week for the social security in the country, Sánchez Cerén stated that the call to the strike does not have vindictive motivations, but political ones.

He called Bases Magisteriales to be return to the dialogue with the government and to avoid actions that affect the children and communities.

Sánchez Cerén said that about only 40 public schools, of the more than five thousand in the country, accepted the call to the strike.

According to the Bases Magisteriales secretary general, the paralyzation, that has a wide covering by the private press media, will affect 70 percent of the schools.

Lopez said that the protest will continue tomorrow and he would even be able to call to a strike of one week next June.

The leader and the union also developed numerous protests in eves of the elections of last March 11, among them a march in the capital 48 hours before the voting.

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