The meeting today between the new minister of education, science and innovation (Fernando Alexandre) and teaching unions has gone a great deal better than the meetings with justice officials and/ or police. Teachers representatives (admittedly not all of them) have emerged saying they are ready to negotiate new formulas for the recovery of ‘frozen years’ – the ‘outrage’ that has peppered the last academic years with strikes and protests. At issue are the six years, six months and 23 days effectively ‘stolen’ from teachers’ careers by past governments. The unions want these stolen years recovered as quickly as possible (within the next three years); the government’s timeline is a little longer than they would like (recovery over five years), but today’s meeting is showing signs that compromise may be possible.
