Brazil: Education union mobilises new faces to defend quality public education | WPN World People News

Democratic and education challenges face the new Executive Board elected by the Confederaçao Nacional dos Trabalhadores em Educação (CNTE) at its 33rd Congress in Brasília on 15 January. The union, representing Brazilian basic level public school education workers, also approved a national education strike, scheduled to start on 15 March.

This action follows earlier mobilisations in defence of democracy, the right to free, secular, quality public education, and valuing education professionals and against the governmental reform of public welfare and other projects and measures, said CNTE President Heleno Araújo Filho. The CNTE is counting on other professional categories, as well as youth and national student organisations, to join the education strike.

Issues of concern

According to Araújo Filho, the “judicial-parliamentary-media coup” in Brazil seeks to:

· Challenge the rule of law set forth in the Constitution

· Replace the income distribution policies with sub-contracting and privatisation policies

· Limit the Brazilian state’s action, preventing it from promoting economic growth by freezing investments for 20 years

· Enforce a welfare reform that will punish the working class and the country’s most impoverished, more specifically women in terms of education, by sponsoring the dismantlement of the public welfare and promoting private funds

Government’s agenda

The Brazilian government is “laying the path for privatising public companies and the mineral wealth, placing the country in the global neoliberal agenda, transferring even public services and funds to the marketplace, especially education, health and welfare,” said the CNTE President.

In addition, the government’s political agenda appears to be orchestrated in Latin America and workers and social movements must unite in opposition to the neoliberal, conservative hegemony in the region, he said. This is the objective of the pedagogical movement coordinated by Education International (EI) affiliates in the region for years.

Support from EI and international community

“We expect broad support from the international community, especially organisations affiliated to Education International, through messages addressed to CNTE and the Brazilian Government, or even by foreign education union representatives attending strategic events during the national strike,” said CNTE General Secretary and EI Latin America Regional Committee Vice-President Fátima Silva.

Source: Education International