AMMAN — A campaign called, “Stand with the Teacher,” received 600 complaints from female teachers about their wages and job contracts since the beginning of 2021, according to Al-Ghad News.
اضافة اعلان
A dialogue session was recently held on
COVID-19 and how teachers were affected by the pandemic.
Nariman Al-Shawahin, a member at the campaign, said that the unified contract system that was implemented to regulate the relationship between private schools and the teachers failed to prevent violations against teachers.
Shawahin added that since it was launched in 2015, the campaign aimed to ensure that teachers in private schools obtained their labor rights; including wages and annual leaves.
She indicated that the main aspect of the system focused on ensuring that teachers received their salaries via bank transfer and that they were paid at least the minimum, but the system had no clear mechanism to ensure its implementation on the ground.
The
pandemic revealed that some teachers are still paid directly and that they are not included in the unified contract system. In addition, they work eight hours every day without annual leaves, according to Shawahin, who also said that those teachers are not included in the social security system.
She added that the teachers did not benefit from social security programs, either because their employers terminated their contracts through arbitrary dismissal used verbal violence to manipulate contract clauses.
Violations increased during the pandemic and the campaign would receive around 500 complaints monthly; involving issues such as maternal leave, breastfeeding hours, annual leaves, and manipulation of the unified contract system, Shawahin added.
Shawahhin said that female teachers who are included in in the social security are still paid less than the minimum wage, while private schools’ owners avoid
paying the percentage stipulated in them; stressing that there should be a way to end these violations.
Dema Arabiyat, a coordinator of the economic empowerment program at the Jordanian National Commission for Women stated that the unified contract was proposed and approved to guarantee teachers’ rights.
The committee proposed many ideas to ensure that school owners are not avoiding or manipulating the system; including compelling schools to issue clearance certificates by the Social Security Corporation, Ministry of Education and the banks and stipulating that schools must not commit any violations against their teachers or workers, according to Arabiyat.
Arabiyat also stressed that teachers must be more aware of their rights and the unified contract, indicating that the education sector was among the most affected sectors during the pandemic.
The Ministry of Labor has released a campaign link to file complaints through, according Arabiyat, who added that the complaints system maintains full privacy, and it does not ask about for names.
She added that the financial fines for violations are not enough.
Speakers at the session recommended that the Ministry of Education must implement a unified mechanism to apply the system, in addition to linking the Social Security Corporation with the unified contract, implementing stricter punishments on violating schools, and forming a committee from the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Education to look into the issue.
They also recommended that inspections on educational institutions be intensified.
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