Nurseries, on alert: STEI warns that the transfer to Education may leave workers jobless

PalmThe STEI union has issued a warning about the job future of municipal nursery workers in the Balearic Islands. According to them, many of them “will be left without work” if the town councils opt to transfer the centers to the Ministry of Education and Universities.

The notice was made public this Thursday at a press conference on the occasion of the presentation of the campaign ‘0-3 Let’s Care for Who Educates’. During the appearance, the union focused on the sector's management model and pointed out that more than 70% of nurseries operate under private management.

In this context, they explained that cases have already been detected in Mallorca and Ibiza where municipally owned and managed nurseries will pass to the Ministry. Nevertheless, they stressed that the regional administration will assume the management of the centers but not the staff, a decision that could directly affect current workforces.

Free tuition "without planning"

The STEI has also criticized the way the free provision for the 0-3 age group has been rolled out, which they consider has been applied "without planning". According to the union, this lack of foresight has led to dysfunctions such as an increase in demand for the catering service in nurseries. Therefore, they have called for the future catering decree to incorporate the specificities of this educational stage and set "adequate" ratios that guarantee the safety of the children.

Another of the issues they have raised are the "structural inequalities" in the working conditions of female workers. This situation, they explain, stems from the coexistence of multiple management models and, consequently, different labor agreements.

According to data collected by the union from information provided by the Department, 73% of the nurseries in the Islands are privately managed. Of these, 53% are privately owned and managed, while 19.8% are municipally owned but externally managed. In contrast, 16.5% of the centers are municipally owned and managed, and about 10% depend directly on the Balearic Government.

Faced with this scenario, the STEI insists on the need to promote an autonomous collective agreement that unifies the conditions of the entire sector. The union recalls that a meeting was convened last December to initiate negotiations, but denounces that the majority of employers' associations did not attend.

Finally, they have called for the intervention of the Department of Labor, Employment and Public Function to act as a mediator and facilitate the opening of this negotiation process. They have also advocated for the creation of new public direct management places to "reverse the privatization trend" which, they warn, has consolidated in recent years.