Cultural: Teacher's Strike!

I know that I really don’t mention daily life in Poland that much, because, well, just because.

The most interesting thing happening right now is that the teachers are threatening a strike.

All the time my children were in Polish public school, they didn’t face this. I’m kind of surprised that it has come to this - as it seems more like something that would happen in France than here in Poland.

We’ll see whether kids get time off from school or not by the time this thing is published, I guess we’ll know. I’m writing it ahead of time, as you must have figured out!

This is the school where our children to in elementary school.

I know you are curious as to what kind of salaries teacher’s get. Right now the minimum number or hours a week that teachers work is 18 hours a week - and the government wants that to go up to 22 hours/week - and in doing that, they could give teachers a raise. Right now the teacher’s salary is 5,600 zl ($1463) for the package (gross) and could go up to 7,100 zl ($1855) per month if they go up to 22 hours per week. The unions want to get a raise of 1000 zl/month ($261) increase. We’ll see what happens. (That information was taken from www.tvn24.pl website.

As of this article, they say the salaries range from 3.045- 5,600 zl/month.

I thought it was interesting to know this. We hear about strikes in France all the time. We had our own post office strike earlier this year - but this is the first time that I’ve heard of teacher’s striking here….it may have happened before - but it didn’t happen while my kids were in school.

I did ask a man whose daughter is in school (he was at church this morning) and he said that she will go to school like normal. If the strike does happen, the workers at the day care facility will just take the kids and they will play all day - like recess (or day camp) all day long! I doubt the kids will complain - especially not in April when the weather is beautiful!

And so now you know! This is one of those cultural things that at least a few of us are interested in!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store!

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