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Students protest against raising teacher’s retirement age
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CyprusTHE PANCYPRIAN Coordinating Committee of Students (PSEM) refused to attend their first period of classes today to protest the move of the OELMEK teacher’s union to extend the retirement age of teachers from 60 to 63.
PSEM claims extending the retirement age will make it difficult for recent graduates to find employment as teachers because older teachers will stay in their positions longer.
“If I finish now as a teacher, there is a problem,” said PSEM president Michalis Farao. “Students are left in one place for another three years and the problem [of finding employment] grows,” he said.
“If the retirement age rises to 63, then it might go to 65,” he continued. “Will it continue to rise at every turn?”
Labour Minister Sotiroulla Charalambous agreed with PSEM’s assessment, saying “if there is a delay in the retirement age of teachers in the public education system that means young people who want to be teachers will be unemployed. This is their argument and it is objective, it is mathematics,” she said.
Farao said yesterday’s protest was extremely successful and will be followed today at 11 am with another protest outside Parliament. PSEM will stage actions as long as OELMEK pursues the extension, he added.
“We will not sit in one place,” said Farao. We will continue with other measures if [OELMEK] continues what it is doing.”
Education Minister Andreas Demitriou asserted yesterday that his Ministry has nothing to do with the situation. “I assume the protest is not directed to the Ministry of Education, but addressed elsewhere,” he said.
According to Farao, a referendum proposing an extension of the retirement age was voted down by the majority of teachers in 2006, and the issue should therefore not be resurrected now.
The Social Insurance Law stipulates that a person can take his old age pension at age 63 if he fulfils certain requirements. If he does not, he is entitled to his pension at 65. But teachers have a collective agreement with the State which allows them to receive their pension at age 60 from a special fund until they are either 63 or 65.
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Demetris from Larnaca comments:
Unfortunately, people who do the real life math, also know that State cannot afford to pay 3 years of pensions and salaries for replacement teachers. As for encouraging the students to demonstrate, in between archaic curriculums, irrelevant class subjects, and an uncertain employment market, you've just wasted one precious day of their education.
Joe Citizen from Limassol comments:
fknose from Cyprus- 'but because this latest issue touches on their self-interest (sort of), they found their voice...'
Quite tight, 'sort of' is the word. The brats should be pushing for a review of the whole system with the skewed ratios of employed teachers and newly qualifies. We simply have too many teachers and some newly qualified have to wait for 20 years to get appointed but this also in part because they all want to be in the public sector and will rather wait to their detriment. Most other professions retire at 63-65 so what's the problem? A lot of these 'bright' students do into teaching just to secure a post knowing full well that the system is against them. Teaching is a noble profession but like any other, its numbers should be controlled by community size.
fknose from Cyprus comments:
Several weeks ago the house of representatives unanimously agreed to the practise of telephone surveillance (in order to tackle terrorism, and other isms). One would have expected our 'enlightened' youth to take to the streets in protest at this blatant disregard for basic human rights and invasion of privacy...ubiquitous in their absence, of course, but because this latest issue touches on their self-interest (sort of), they found their voice...