University professors, researchers declare three-day general strike

The National Union of Higher Education announced a general strike across all institutions of higher education and scientific research in Morocco on June 7, 8 and 9.

In a statement, the union called on “all professors and academic researchers to mobilize and prepare to engage in unprecedented forms of resistance, in order to preserve their dignity and to preserve the public institutions for higher education and scientific research.”

The union said that the protest aims to “confront the policy of procrastination pursued by the ministry in fulfilling its obligations, especially those related to the statute for researcher professors.”

The union “absolutely rejected” the Ministry’s proposed formula regulating higher education and scientific research, calling it regressive, saying it aims for “excessive management control.”

Professors and academic researchers affiliated with the union are calling out “the marginalization of professors and researchers in terms of contributing to the establishment of strategic programs for the development of higher education institutions and universities.”

The University Professors Syndicate also expressed its rejection of “any technical dialogue in any joint committee,” considering that “the resumption of participatory work, underestimated by the Ministry and which the union has long clung to, is contingent on achieving a qualitative leap by expressing the government’s political will to overcome the policy of stalling and wasting time.”

However, despite the declaration of the national strike, some affiliate syndicates are requiring a clearer communication of the professors’ plight.

Abdelali Hour, a professor and researcher, told Hespress EN that “the statement of the Administrative Committee was not up to our expectations,” explaining that “the syndicate did not explicitly include many regional coordinations’ demands, such as the necessary increase of researcher’s salaries.”

“The statement also did not mention the professors’ requirement to exempt scientific research compensation from income tax,” added the professor, as regionals unions continue to invoke the necessity of this measure.