Why close schools if only 1% of teachers work?

To read the dispatches of certain combative trade unions it seems that they are taking over a Bastille per month. «Great accession of the square», «Resounding success», «A human tide» … Then go to see the real numbers of the Department of Public Administration. And it turns out that the most massive strike saw the participation of 1.62 percent of the fighters: 15,908 out of 1,102,069 school employees. A triumph. For heaven's sake, woe to question the right to strike and even before that the right to proclaim it. However…

But the new investigation of Tuttoscuola shows how some rules dictated by the desire for dialogue within the scholastic world with the largest unions, the minor ones and the Lilliputians, for a total of 177 abbreviations (114 with less than one hundred members), each of which in obvious disagreement with the other 176, have been worn down by years of dubious applications. The table is reworked by the magazine directed by Giovanni Vinciguerra on the data of Department of Public Administration.

Table showing that in the last year, from 26 October 2018 to 25 October 2019, strikes at the school were twelve but all far away in a sidereal way from the real strikes, which count, like the one against the Good School of Matteo Renzi that on 5 May 2015, driven by the most important or trade union sections, saw the participation of the 64.89% of school employees, from the janitors and principals, and was a sort of beating to the then winning Tuscan premier. Of the twelve proclaimed strikes, all from minor abbreviations such as the Unicobas (1,527 members), Cub scuola (979), Sgb (228) or even microscopic ones such as the Sisa (Independent School and Environment Union) or the Italian union union-Ait Scuola that there are 13 members per person (thirteen) out of over one million employees from nursery to high school, there is not even one who has at least touched the 2% quota. All below. With percentages that in two cases marked participation of 0.50 and 0.52. Trade union and political catastrophes almost ignored by the protagonists, certain in their microcosm of being the only ones, of course, to be right.

But what does it matter to the citizens of these tiny strikes? Nothing, perhaps, if the waiting for the closed schools and the hours of teaching and study consequently thrown out did not weigh heavily. The mechanism, writes Tuttoscuola, is consolidated: "The proclamation of a strike – even when it is not carried out by the most representative unions (which did not participate in any of the 12 strikes of the last year) – is a news that is relaunched on everything the media, national and local circuit. Newscasts, radio, print media, websites, followed by the tam tam via social networks, act as a sounding board (often recalling the image of the "Black Friday", or, signaling, as did the Ansa on 24 October last, that "For the agitation of the grassroots unions there will be discomfort in the school") ". What is the knot? That the laws governing the right to strike "do not, however, mention the ability of the worker to communicate or not if he intends to strike". Only an agreement of 1999 speaks of it: «On the occasion of each strike, the school heads will invite the staff to make in writing voluntary communication about joining the strike by the tenth day after the announcement of the strike or by the fifth, if the strike is declared for more than one sector. After this deadline, on the basis of the available cognitive data, the school heads will evaluate the extent of the reduction in the school service … "

Let us re-read the key word: "voluntary". To understand: all the school employees involved can decide whether or not to advise, at their pleasure, the principals, colleagues and pupils (whether they are 18-year-olds or three-year-olds) if they will or will not go to school. Result: "In the impossibility of knowing the levels of abstention" and in front of the risk of being in front of "surprise" tens or hundreds of students impossible to manage, get their hands on by warning the schools: for safety it's better to keep the kids at home. And here is the mockery: "In many cases the total suspension of the lessons does not find successively with the adhesion to the strike: closed schools and very few teachers on strike".

The economic aspect? "The adhesion to the strike involves the withholding on the salary, the non-communication no. The second, however, ends up having more weight than the first, at no cost (for the worker, but not for the community). Moreover, given that it is permitted by a union agreement, why do you blame those who do not communicate anything? " He says the exasperation of those parents who, on December 16, 2018, met up with their children and the same teachers locked out, in the frost, by the Boltiere school (Bergamo) because not only were there no janitors but no one had the keys to open. Or those other children stuck in the minibus for a month in front of the barred doors of a school in Piano della Lenta, Teramo. "In the penultimate strike of which data is available, that of Friday 10 May 2019, 5,767 strikes between teachers and non-teaching staff, on a staff of 1,100,380. And yet the chronicles of that day tell that in many schools there was no lesson ", writes the magazine of Vinciguerra.

But what is the cost of all those classrooms closed due to the lack of statements by those who wanted or did not want to go on strike? «They can be estimated in two and a half million class hours lost by students in the last 12 months for microsystems to which 1% of the staff of the school has adhered yes and in over 60 million euros the relative cost for the State ". At least. Maybe more. Perhaps much more.

But is the "non-obligation to communicate adherence to the strike" really equal to the right to strike, as claimed by the most miniscule and combative unions which, Tuttoscuola maintains, "participate in the saga of visibility"? Mah …