Ongoing Meetings Between Ministry of National Education and Unions for Unified Teacher Status

Meetings between the Ministry of National Education and the most representative unions to agree on a unified status for teachers are still ongoing. Social dialogue in the education sector would have marked, it seems, a significant step forward.

The meeting held this week between the Minister of National Education, Preschool and Sports and the four most representative trade union centers in the sector, namely the CDT, the FDT, the UMT and the UGTM, has in fact made it possible to adopt a clear agenda for dealing with outstanding points.

The last meeting held by the trade unions and the supervisory authorities was in fact dedicated to examining the merits of the agreement signed between the government and the trade unions relating to the unified status for all civil servants in the sector, in the framework of the implementation of the roadmap for the reform of public schools 2022/2026 in addition to other files.

A joint statement from the education unions said that the meeting was devoted to the presentation of drafts and the review of legal texts, and concerned the draft decree of the basic regime for employees of the ministry, the draft decree public education establishments and the draft decree on training centres.

The communiqué also indicates that it was agreed to present all the draft legal texts within the framework of the activation of the agreements of January 18, 2022 and January 14, 2023, to discuss them and to make preliminary observations on them, as well as deletion or amendment, before the educational meeting. The trade unions receive these projects to present them to their organs.

The same source confirmed that the meeting agreed to start with the decree of the basic scheme for employees of the Ministry of National Education, which consists of 16 chapters. It was also agreed to review and audit 12 applied decisions, in conjunction with the presentation of each article. The basic system requires an application decision, according to the press release, which indicates that work will continue according to a precise timetable to complete as soon as possible all the legal texts incorporating the agreements, so that they enter into force effective in the month. next September.

Commenting on this, Sadik Rghioui, the General Secretary of the National Union of Education member of the Democratic Federation of Labor (FDT) told Hespress: “What is new in the meeting is that the two parties have started the actual drafting of the draft employee status for the Ministry of National Education. Rghioui added that “previous meetings had been limited to interviews and discussions regarding the general framework of the project. The progress is that we have now started to formulate its chapters and clauses in practice”.

And the union leader added: “The study of the project is supposed to end during the summer of the current year, so that it can be implemented as soon as the next school year starts”. He further pointed out that this “requires some preparation time, however.” At the end of March, the Ministry of National Education held a meeting with the four most representative education unions, during which it set the dates for the publication of the decrees implementing the January 14 agreement as agreed by the two parts.

The joint communiqué issued by the unions, indicated that the basic system requires an application decision, which would specify that work will continue according to a precise timetable to complete as soon as possible all the legal texts incorporating the agreements, so that they come into force next September.

The two parties had agreed, according to the same joint communiqué published by the four unions, that a meeting would be held on April 25, “to present and discuss the draft decree for the new statute in the light of the union proposals and to work to overcome the controversial points”. This new round of dialogue therefore took place on Tuesday between the Ministry of National Education and the most representative unions around the new unified status of the teacher. Very little information has leaked concerning this meeting, it is said that the guardianship is preparing to unveil the first “draft”.