Daily Black Immigrant News
The Puerto Rican Association of University Professors (APPU) of the University of Puerto Rico called on all its registrants, the rest of the teaching staff and the university community at large to “Come Out for Collective Bargaining and Solidarity with Displaced Teaching” this Wednesday . , September 14, from 7 am. “We ask all teaching staff of the university to wear their black shirts on the 14th and conduct their lessons outside our classrooms. Let’s use the common spaces of our beautiful campuses and our black t-shirts as vehicles to make visible our poor working conditions and abuse of fellow homeless. In the same way, we ask other university sectors to show solidarity with the demands of teaching by also wearing black”, said Ángel Rodríguez Rivera, President of APPU.
APPU is immersed in a union election petition process to become the representative of UPR teaching staff and to be able to negotiate a collective agreement. This petition has already been submitted to the Labor Relations Board and the University management has not yet decided to accept and allow union election. “APPU strongly believes in the ability of the institution’s faculty to decide if they want to have a collective agreement and seek to improve their working conditions through this mechanism. The most democratic and fairest thing is for the teaching staff to be able to vote on what they consider appropriate. The process is simple, you vote and decide. We don’t see another more democratic alternative than that,” Rodríguez continued.
The trade union election and eventually the negotiation of a collective agreement becomes more important in the face of the economic crisis that UPR has been suffering for years and that was magnified with the arrival of the PROMESA law and the Fiscal Control Board. “Since JCF arrived in Puerto Rico, the problems at the University have increased. The institution’s priorities were disrupted. Teaching privileges, such as tuition waivers, were eliminated. Worse yet, the University has replaced regular teachers with shift teaching. These fellows are already about half of the entire UPR faculty. That critical portion of faculty lives without job security, meager benefits, and starvation wages. Moments of crisis require the institution’s priorities to be monitored. The collective agreement allows us to participate directly in that process. This allows us to protect the jobs and improve the employment conditions of these displaced teachers. At this time, management has unilateral and arbitrary jurisdiction in the treatment of those male and female colleagues. Therefore, the importance of union elections and the collective agreement of teachers”, said Rodríguez.
As a result, APPU asked teachers to wear black and leave their classrooms to show our outrage at the lack of resources, in solidarity with the homeless teachers and the UPR’s attempt to limit the right to education , teachers’ collective negotiations. “On Wednesday we hope to see an outraged, visible and active university,” concluded Rodríguez.
[embedded content]
NewsAmericasNow.com
