Thousands of Hungarians protested in Budapest on Friday against low wages and poor working conditions for school teachers amid increasing staff shortages.
A crowd, estimated by an AFP photographer at around 8,000, demanded better conditions for teachers at a solidarity demonstration organized by students.
“Pay our teachers! Without them there is no future!” read a protester’s placard, which pointed to the exodus of teachers from the profession in recent years.
The number of vacant apprenticeship positions in primary and secondary schools has risen from 7,000 in 2014 to 35,000 in 2019, according to the latest official data.
According to the OECD, a teacher’s salary in the EU is only 60 percent of what comparable trained workers in other sectors receive.
That compares to 90 percent in other developed countries, according to the OECD.
“Teachers have to work in humiliating circumstances, no wonder few here want to be teachers these days,” Orsolya Udvari, a 22-year-old student protester, told AFP.
Teachers are also complaining that they were left out of a round of government spending to other groups, such as pensioners and doctors, ahead of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s re-election for a fourth term in April.
Some teachers this week carried out so-called “civil disobedience” actions by temporarily halting work as schools reopened after the summer break.
Teachers’ unions, meanwhile, say they are currently organizing a nationwide strike, despite a February government decree restricting strike action.
The government says it cannot meet teachers’ demands until the EU releases billions of euros in long-held pandemic recovery funds.
Budapest has been allocated €5.8 billion, but its spending plan for the funds has not yet been approved by Brussels amid corruption concerns.
The delay comes as the Hungarian economy is under pressure from a weakening local currency and rapidly rising inflation, both of which have hit new records this year.
Hungary’s central bank raised interest rates to an 18-year high of 11.75 percent on Tuesday in an attempt to stabilize both negative trends.
