Jordan Raises Teachers' Pay in Bid to Defuse Nationwide Strike
Arab World
Asharq Al-Awsat
Jordan’s cabinet on Saturday offered striking teachers pay hikes in a bid to end a damaging nationwide strike that has piled pressure on the debt-burdened country undergoing tough IMF-backed fiscal reforms amid concerns of a new round of demands by army retirees and other public-sector employees. Over one and a half million students in the country’s public schools have been hit by the strike, now it its fourth week, heeded by over 100,000 teachers after the government rejected a demand for a 50 percent pay rise of their basic salaries. Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz announced pay increases ranging from 6 to 18 percent. “It’s high time students go back to school. We hope the union will look positively at these decisions,” Razzaz said, saying that the hikes would take effect at the start of next month. The union, however, rejected the measure and criticized the prime minister. “You are imposing a solution from one side. This is an authoritarian method,” Nasser Al Nawasrah, deputy head of the Jordanian Teachers Syndicate, said in a statement, according to Reuters. “We donate these bread crumbs to the government.” The government says the union’s demands would add to fiscal woes while the country grapples to curb record public debt of around $40 billion. The debt is due at least in part to successive governments’ adopting an expansionist fiscal policy characterized by job creation in the public sector. Strike leaders and the government who met on Saturday in the latest round of talks were in emergency session to discuss the government’s first pay offer in a deepening crisis. The government has accused the teachers union of intransigence and of forcing its hand at a time when it says the economy faces a downturn and state finances are stretched.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1923516/jordan-raises-teachers-pay-bid-defuse-nationwide-strike
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