BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Thousands of Hungarian students and parents protested on Friday in the second major rally in two weeks to support teachers who have been fired for joining strike action for higher wages and more teachers being warned of dismissal.
Teachers have started an “I want to teach” campaign and called for civil disobedience to demand higher wages, a solution to a deepening shortage of teachers, and the right to strike.
A pledge by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government earlier this week to raise teachers’ salaries to 80% of average earnings of university graduates by 2025, including an increase of about a fifth next year, did little to quell protesters.
The raise “will not solve the problem because if anyone does the math, the 20% salary raise will not even cover inflation,” said Nikolett Toth-Czeper, a teacher, who joined the rally in central Budapest.
In power since 2010, nationalist Orban faces his toughest test to date with the economy headed for recession, inflation at two-decade-highs, the forint at record lows and European Union funds in limbo in a dispute over democratic standards.
Orban’s government has said it would hike teachers’ wages once the European Commission releases EU recovery funding, which has been withheld amid a rule-of-law dispute.
Successive falls in the forint to record lows forced the National Bank of Hungary to raise interest rates in an emergency move on Friday, with inflation projected to rise further from a 20.1% annual reading in September.
Students, teachers and parents demanding higher living standards for teachers staged the biggest anti-government demonstration since Orban’s April re-election last week.
“It’s humiliating. They are just trying to cover up the problem but it will not solve anything. It is humiliating and belongs to the category of jokes,” said Sandor Kovacs, holding a banner saying “Sandor, the last physics teacher.”
(Reporting by Krisztina Fenyo; Writing by Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Grant McCool)
