The government’s speech talks about “modernization” and “freedom”, but behind the blackboards There is a reality that numbers cannot hide: a system that works thanks to forced presenteeism and the poor health of thousands of education workers.. What Javier Milei’s government presents as a necessary labor reform is nothing more than the deepening of a model of exploitation that mortgages the future of our students and their families and is pushing teaching to the limit of physical and mental collapse.
The exhaustion map: the numbers that the Government ignores
From the health team of the Buenos Aires teaching union Ademys, of which we are part of the Board of Directors as 9 de Abril teaching group, we carried out important survey work in schools, to delve deeper into aspects related to health and teaching working conditions. Through a survey and with more than 500 cases, we were able to systematize data and draw conclusions that give us an overview of how schools work and what the impact is on the health (physical and psychological) of those who support education.
The data is compelling and They deny the story of absenteeism and “abuse of licenses” circulated by the mediathe official leadership and humanists such as Grabois that “asks for a wall from the missing teachers.” According to the survey, 34.3% of teachers did not take a single day of leave throughout the year. Far from being an indicator of good health, this figure reveals mechanisms of suffocating discipline: 80% of teachers claim that they were unable to take a necessary leave for fear of being rejected, while 78% live with the constant worry of getting sick or having a family member get sick.
The pressure is particularly brutal on the shoulders of the youngest teachers. 73% express an inability to disconnect (a feeling of not being able to stop thinking about school things after the work day) and 87% express serious concentration problems, clear symptoms of a devastating cognitive and emotional overload. This situation also reveals the socio-labor conditions of teaching work: building conditions, overcrowded classrooms, social problems within the classrooms, low salaries, a heavy load of administrative tasks, lack of resources and an extensive work day of two or three shifts (with little time off) to make ends meet.
The feminized face of adjustment: “Coming home means continuing working”
Teaching has a woman’s face and, as statistics reveal, also a body broken by inequality. While the system stands on our shoulders, the 93.9% of the teachers surveyed express living with pain as part of their work day: migraines, headaches and back pain, varicose veins, digestive problems. Medicating the symptoms (painkillers, muscle relaxants, among others) appears as an individual solution to maintain work capacity, almost a matter of survival. And it’s not just tiredness, the daily exhaustion gap is 24 percentage points compared to men, a dramatic figure that arises from the “triple burden” where the classroom is only the first stage of a day that never ends.
Upon crossing the door of the house, after an exhausting work day, 67.2% of female teachers assume almost all of the domestic and care tasks, invisible and unpaid, in a disproportion that condemns us to a constant work tension of 90.9%. If we add the workload outside of school (class preparation, planning, correction, etc.) we have an x-ray that shows that we are paying with our bodies and our time for the adjustment and precariousness of the public system, revealing a structural problem.
The economic adjustment also hits us harder. The impact is specific and alarming: faced with the drop in salary, 79% of female teachers fear having to add even more hours of work to make ends meet, while 56% are afraid of getting sick and requesting leave. Thus, the mental health of teachers is a battlefield where exhaustion tends to become chronic and silence is imposed out of necessity. The inability to disconnect (70.5%) and persistent insomnia (78.4) prevent the necessary recovery to face the classroom the next day and the mind does not rest when the double shift awaits at the end of school hours.
Teacher health as a target: the “essential service” against the right to strike
There is a link between the systematic deterioration of our working and health conditions and the battery of labor and educational reforms of the national government and the Buenos Aires government. All of these plans do not seek to improve learning, but rather have a much more catastrophic worsening on the horizon. Declaring education an essential service, in addition to a clear attack on the right to strike, is a way of forcing presenteeism and seeking to weaken the strength that teaching can have in alliance with the entire educational community.
This “essentiality” is the political tool to consolidate a model where the body of teachers is a disposable resource. In the City of Buenos Aires, Macri’s Ministry of Education privatized the occupational medicine system and our licenses remained in the hands of a private company, “DIENTS” (which, in addition to having complaints for fraudulent administration) The entire year was dedicated to creating permanent obstacles and bureaucratic requirements.denying completely justified medical leaves or justifying fewer days than indicated.
The government itself acknowledged that nearly 2,000 revised licenses were incorrectly rejected.that is, 2000 teachers who went to work suffering from an illness. In addition, managing leave is sometimes a more stressful condition than going to work sick. That is to say, The entire occupational health system is designed to force presenteeism, penalize health care, persecute, discipline and stigmatize teachers. The national reform aims to extend this punishment model, where state control is disguised as “efficiency” while key funds such as the FONID (National Teacher Incentive Fund) are cut.
The bosses’ logic of our occupational health system, then, reinforces our sufferings and is far from solving the unhealthy aspects of teaching work. Only by changing the causes of occupational diseases can we improve our psychophysical health. Health is not a business. Increasing the budget to have better health care, having a comprehensive health system that addresses the prevention of teaching illnesses and that takes into account all the illnesses and needs of education workers would be an essential first step.
Getting out of individual survival: the fight against labor and educational reform
The vicious circle is clear: 32% of teachers over 50 years of age are moonlighting because they cannot make ends meet. More work produces more burnout and more individual strategies to continue working. This exploitation is not a “professional virtue”, it is a direct attack on life that only benefits those who want to commodify the right to learn. Faced with this panorama, the exit cannot be individual. The fight for a reduction in working hours, salaries that cover the family basket and the rejection of precarious reforms is an urgent task.
Mobilizing against labor reform on the day it is discussed in the Senate is a matter for the entire educational community and we have to actively take it into our hands. It has to be with a strike, with the powerful feminist movement in the streetswith whom we share the fight against sexist violence, hate speech and femicides, for CSE, for the right to health and for the rights of people from LGTBIQ+ groups.
Every company that closes and lays off, every cut in the payment of salaries and social works, every working woman who somewhere is paying with her body for the more exploitative plans that the government wants to impose, is a family and a mother from our school who is left on the street or who cannot bring a plate of food home. The future of our students is also a fight, those who are wanted with their heads down and without any employment rights. This slave reform will be the basis and excuse to advance – even more – with our already degraded and impoverished working conditions.. That day we have to be in the streets and put on our overalls as a symbol of a fight that is that of all workers.
If they touch one, they touch all of us. On February 11 we have to surround Congress.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
