The SNTE (National Education Workers’ Union) has submitted its 2022 National List of Demands to Mexico’s Public Education Secretariat (SEP) for review.
The union has called for amendments to education legislation to ensure greater recognition and appreciation of education workers and their role as agents of change. This includes a commitment to improving their pay and terms of employment, social security and working conditions, with a view to strengthening the Mexican education system.
A total of 249 demands have been presented, including a substantial increase in teachers’ pay, the implementation of professional development programmes and training in the use of new technologies, as well as the provision of the necessary equipment to apply them, an increase in personal loans and the financing of housing.
The list also includes calls for occupational stress, as well as Covid-19 and its after-effects, to be considered occupational hazards, and for teachers to continue to be considered as a priority group for any Covid-19 vaccination boosters required.
The General Secretary of the SNTE, Alfonso Cepeda Salas, emphasised the democratic nature of this list of demands, which has been drafted in consultation with over a million union members.
Cepeda Salas stressed that a favourable response to teachers’ economic, social, labour and professional demands would be “a major incentive for teachers to remain steadfast in their determination to overcome educational inequalities and, more broadly, would be the best recognition that the nation can give to the teaching profession”.