Strike at USP: Teachers decide to maintain strike – 10/05/2023 – Education

Members of Adusp (Teachers’ Association of the University of São Paulo) decided to maintain the strike in support of the strike in force at the institution at least until next Tuesday (10).

The decision was approved in an assembly and, according to the entity, was taken in support of the students, who remain paralyzed — the students scheduled an assembly for Monday (9) to decide whether or not to maintain the movement.

Teachers said they intend to follow the students’ decision.

In an attempt to end the strike, the USP rectory offered on Wednesday (4) the hiring of 148 temporary professionals in 45 days, to be distributed to the most needy courses. Afterwards, these vacancies would become effective.

The proposal pleased some of the strikers, both students and teachers. Therefore, there was an expectation that teachers would accept the end of the strike this Thursday. But during the Adusp meeting, which lasted almost three hours, the majority of demonstrations were for the continuation of the strike.

Understand the claims

Students from all USP units in the capital joined the strike started due to the lack of teachers at the institution. The movement was started by FFLCH (Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences) on September 18th. The organizers managed to expand the movement to campuses in the interior of São Paulo as well.

Students summarize their demands in five areas: hiring teachers; increase in student living aid; structural improvements at USP Leste; promotion of indigenous entrance exams; and valuing student rights.

The acquisition of new teachers is the most debated topic. Students present three demands at this point:

• Automatic trigger return for hiring teachers: Today, when a teacher dies, is dismissed or retires, the vacancy is not automatically replaced. Students demand feedback from this mechanism for vacancies to be answered;
• Minimum number of educators (1,683) to guarantee the functioning of the courses: this number is based on the return of the ratio of the number of students to the number of professors that USP had in 2014;
• End of the notice of excellence or merit: For students, this criterion is absolutely unfair and does not allocate new vacancies to units that need teachers.