Serving the UMN community since 1900

The Minnesota Daily

Serving the UMN community since 1900

The Minnesota Daily

Serving the UMN community since 1900

The Minnesota Daily

Daily Email Edition

Get MN Daily NEWS delivered to your inbox Monday through Friday!

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Thousands of Puerto Rican teachers stage protest over wages, working conditions

.SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Thousands of Puerto Rican teachers marched to the gates of the governor’s mansion Sunday, threatening to go on strike for higher salaries and better working conditions if long-stalled bargaining talks are not resumed.

The two sides will sit down again Monday to try to resolve the two-year impasse. But union leaders representing the majority of Puerto Rico’s 42,000 public school teachers plan a Tuesday news conference to announce a strike date if no agreement is reached.

“We hope to send a firm message to Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá so that the agreement is signed,” Teachers Federation President Rafael Feliciano said among a throng of marchers.

The island’s department of education and the union have agreed to 26 articles of a proposed collective-bargaining agreement, but 20 others remain unsigned, including 16 salary-related clauses.

The looming strike has divided the union’s roughly 32,000 members as some urge restraint, saying the group’s first strike since 1993 should be a last resort. Strikers could be fired under a local law that forbids disruption of the public education system.

The starting salary for a teacher in the U.S. territory is $19,200 a year – about a third less than the average public school teacher salary on the U.S. mainland.

Leave a Comment
More to Discover

Accessibility Toolbar

Comments (0)

All The Minnesota Daily Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *