In schools in the north, but also some large cities in the south, teachers could earn more than their colleagues in the rest of Italy. This is required by the League’s program voted by the Chamber of Deputies and accepted by the government yesterday. The text calls for an adjustment of salaries in the public sector based on the real cost of living, meaning more money in areas where more is spent on housing, primary consumer goods, and services. The opposition protests: it would be “wage cages”, an “unacceptable” proposal.
And so out-of-work teachers return to their original areas as soon as possible and ask for transfers or temporary assignments, leaving chairs in the north immediately open. With the inevitable teaching problems that fall on both the students and the schools that do a great job of convening teachers to find replacements.
“The goal of the League – explained the Deputy Minister of Labor, a member of the League of the North Claudio Durigon – is clear: to strengthen collective bargaining and second-level negotiations. Anyone who finds an excuse to talk about “salary cages” is only engaging in demagoguery. With the strengthening of decentralized bargaining, national bargaining is not undermined as would be the case with statutory minimum wages, but measures are taken to provide concrete answers at all wage levels”. But the opposition is rebelling against the plan, which, they warn, could create a series of A series of B series teachers: «It is completely unacceptable – condemns Davide Faraone, head of the Italia Viva group in the Chamber – the problem is not to pay teachers more in the north and less in the south, but to raise teachers’ salaries, whether in the North or the South, based on merit and recognition. Again, for purely propaganda reasons, the League has no problem causing incalculable damage to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people with the idea that workers in the South deserve less than those working further north.”
The basic salary would remain the same for everyone, as explained by Forza Italia MP Chiara Tenerini, a member of the Montecitorio Labor Commission, who rejects the term salary cage: «The aim was only to create a balance about the environment in which to live. We are talking about accessory privileges that can be modulated depending on the environment in which we find ourselves. But of course, the basic salary must remain the same for everyone regardless of where you live.”
Italian teacher pay is reigniting the political debate and the cost of living issue has been on the table for years, weighing on teachers who often teach from home in the northern regions. A few months ago, there was also talk of a rental plan that would face positions in the Chamber: the Minister of Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara, presented a proposal at the end of August that would allow teachers who have to move regions to have affordable accommodation. The goal was to make the work of a teacher more attractive and at the same time increase its economic side.
School, return to italics. “It forces you to use your brain. In Rome, 1 in 5 students have problems with writing
BIANCHI’S IDEA
Draghi’s government also thought about an economic solution to the transfer problem: a year ago, in October 2022, the former Minister of Education, Patrizio Bianchi, proposed to provide recognition, a kind of prize, for teachers who maintain a professorship at the same school. , with 5 consecutive years of service always in the same place. 30 million euros were earmarked in the budget: on the one hand, it was intended to protect the continuity of teaching, on the other, to support schools in areas that face more disadvantaged socio-economic conditions and present a greater dispersion or risk of depopulation.
