SOME 20,000 teachers represented by the Jamaica Teachers Association (JTA) have decided to resort to strike action from tomorrow in pressing their demand for higher salaries.
The impending strike comes against a background that may have influenced the mind-set of a category of workers widely
acknowledged to be underpaid.
That background included the strong emphasis that was given in last October's General Election campaign to the importance of education in the nation's development. Both major political parties were seeking to outdo each other in the manifesto commitment to some degree of free education and the general welfare of this vital sector.
There was also the factor of overseas recruitment of teachers deemed to be sufficiently well-trained for the school systems of America and England and thus easily enticed by the prospect of much higher salaries.
A third influential factor was the ill-advised hiking of parliamentary salaries to an extent which had an impact on the Government's own stance in negotiating with other sectors in the public service.
As a letter from a teacher elsewhere in this edition puts it, they did not have the privilege to be members of the 103 per cent club, having to make do with being part of the three per cent club. The reference, of course, was to the contrast between the parliamentary increase and the Government's offer to the teachers.
Unlike wage bargaining in the industrial or commercial sectors, the immediate victims in a teacher's strike are not profits or material products. It is the children whose educational development is put at some risk if the stoppage is too prolonged.
On that basis we think the strike will be an unfortunate failure of industrial relations not adapting to the sensibilities of the education process.
There was a last-ditch attempt in the Senate on Friday to persuade the teachers to change their minds. Another effort to reach some settlement must be made and so prevent a prolonged disruption of the education process at its most basic and formative stages.
