EDUCATION-BRAZIL: Wage Hike Aimed at Ending University Strike

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 1 2001 (IPS) - The funding that the Brazilian Senate approved Wednesday for a salary increase for professors could finally put an end to the strike that has affected the country’s federal universities for the last 70 days.

The government itself has cast doubt over the future of these public universities, despite the fact that they provide the best tertiary-level education available in Brazil.

Minister of Education Paulo Renato Souza has fuelled doubts about the survival of these public universities in stating that the existing financing for the system, with funds primarily from the national budget, will not last for more than six years.

The university student population in Brazil has grown 62 percent since 1995, but private universities were forced to absorb nearly two-thirds of that expansion, and the demand is tending to rise at an ever-faster pace, said Souza.

The dramatic increase in students seeking a university education is a consequence of the fact that the number of high school graduates has doubled in the last six years. That, in turn, was due to the incorporation of low-income students into the educational system through a financial aid programme, explained Souza.

But according to Antonio Ponciano Bezerra, a leader of the National Syndicate of Higher Education Instructors (ANDES), “it is ministerial terrorism” to say that the future of public universities in Brazil is in danger.

The federal universities, recognised as the country’s best – even in the evaluations conducted by minister Souza -, “survived the military dictatorship (1964-1985).” All they need is a serious educational policy, “which the current government lacks,” Bezerra told IPS.

Souza is not in a position to make long-term forecasts because the term of the government he represents ends in late 2002, said the union leader, adding that future administrations in Brasilia might modify policies and make education a higher priority, strengthening the role of public educations by giving it a larger budget.

Nevertheless, the crisis affecting the institutions that are dependent on the federal government has worsened in the last few years.

This is the fourth professors’ strike in six years. The previous university work stoppage lasted more than 100 days, though had fewer adherents than the current strike.

ANDES, which is at the forefront of the protest, reports that the operations of 49 of the 53 federal institutions – whether universities or other schools of higher education – are at least partially paralysed. The entire system has more than 400,000 students and some 53,500 professors.

In Brazil, with its population of 168 million, 2.3 million university students are distributed among 1,200 institutions and 8,800 degree programmes, according to Ministry of Education figures.

Public education at the tertiary level in this giant South American nation consists of the federal universities, the universities dependent on the state governments, and some municipally-run institutions.

This year’s strike federal university strike involved non- teaching staff, but they ended their protest once their demands were met.

The professors, however, are calling for a 75-percent salary hike, which they say would compensate for economic inflation over the last six years in which their wages were never adjusted, as were the wages of the rest of the federal workforce.

Furthermore, they are demanding the hiring of more professors, bigger research budgets, and other work-related improvements.

“We are open to negotiation. The strike will end when we have documented guarantees” that the government is meeting the demands, stated Bezerra, a professor from Sergipe, in northeast Brazil.

The union leader, however, said the return to the classroom would be delayed in any case because assemblies at each university must debate the proposed resolutions to the strike.

The threat of losing the academic semester as a result of the strike is another unfounded scare tactic being wielded by the education ministry, according to Bezerra.

“The students have never lost a semester, even after the longest strikes, which lasted more than 100 days,” he said, explaining that the professors gave up their vacation time to make up for the missed classes.

Maria Helena de Castro, Brazil’s secretary of higher education, is confident that the federal universities will recover from the current crisis, and that reforms will be viable over the next year, such as establishing administrative autonomy for each institution.

But Castro said that in a restructuring of the federal university system, the costs of the pension system for retired professors and staff are a major obstacle.

More than 40 percent of the salary expenditures goes to the “inactives”, as retirees from Brazil’s public workforce are known. They continue to receive the same amount of money as their “active” colleagues.

Reforms aimed at ensuring autonomy and financial sustainability would not be able to maintain the same retirement conditions for incoming staff and professors, said Castro.

Para Bezerra, the pension problem was caused by another “disastrous policy” of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government. By promoting changes in the social security system, the government fed fears among federal employees that they would ultimately lose their retirement benefits, which prompted many professors to take early retirement.

“I have been a professor for 42 years and could have retired, but I didn’t. Meanwhile, some of my younger colleagues didn’t last,” he said.

As a result, there is now a shortage of professors at the federal universities, which has further aggravated the crisis, said Bezerra.