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The Education Workers Union in Warsaw will hold a rally against planned cuts in education, which will effect hundreds of workers and thousands of pupils.

The City of Warsaw has no legal competence to make dismissals or reorganize the educational structure, but it is cutting the budget and telling the schools how to
reorganize. The first decision they made is to lift the maximum limit of students per class (despite this not being in their competence). They simply will not give money and force schools to join classes. The result will be more crowded classes and less attention for pupils, and more stress for teachers. Eventually, the joining of classes will also mean the reduction of teaching positions. The other ¨recommendation” made by the city is to cut hours of some teachers and auxiliary staff at schools. Again, the City has no legal competence to decide this, but simply cut the budget and ¨recommend¨ to the schools that they adjust their budgets by such measures.

The effect of the latter is that certain workers in schools, caretakers or janitors,
will no longer have full-time employment. In the case of caretakers, this will be an
extremely hard blow. As it is now, the typical gross salary of a caretaker is just 400 euros (the legal minimum wage) and less than 300 euros a month take home. This category of worker can not really make ends meet in Warsaw but many of them are older women, many having started work years ago and they are not very competitive on the job market, where it is very hard for a woman over 40 to find any job, and many of these caretakers are 50 or older. As a present for all their years of low-paid service, they will have their hours reduced so they would not even earn minimum wage.

The rally will take place outside the city hall and a follow-up protest will take place during the session of the City Council.