Who will negotiate the professional future of teachers?

PalmaTeachers in the Balearic Islands will head to the polls on December 2nd to elect their union representatives. The elections come at a particularly relevant time for the future of the education system, because the representatives who emerge from this process will be in charge of negotiating and implementing the new 2027-2031 educational framework agreement with the Ministry of Education and, subsequently, monitoring it and overseeing its application over the coming years. The electoral calendar is already set. The censuses will be published on October 22nd at 10:00 AM and teachers will have until October 27th at 10:00 AM to submit claims. The final census will be published on October 29th at 12:00 PM.

Trade union organizations will have until November 9th at 12:00 PM to submit their candidacies. The proclamation of the candidacies will take place the following day, November 10th, while the period for claims will end on November 12th at 12:00 PM. The final candidacies will be proclaimed on November 13th. The electoral campaign will begin on November 16th and will last until November 30th. December 1st will be the day of reflection and the following day, December 2nd, teachers will be able to vote.

The precedent

The previous union elections were in 2022 and left STEI as the force with the most votes, with 1,955. ANPE obtained 1,345, while SIAU and UOB remained with 723 and 714 votes, respectively. Behind them were UGT, with 572 votes; Alternativa, with 479; CCOO, with 455, and CSIF, with 59. The 2022 data also evidenced important movements in relation to the preferences of the electors, which will now be seen whether they consolidate or not. STEI lost 1,011 votes, while ANPE gained 347. SIAU, which had just been born, obtained 723 supports and was the third force in number of votes. UOB lost 305; Alternativa, 269 and CCOO, 286. UGT experienced a drop of 16 votes and CSIF achieved 59 votes.

Now, four years later, the unions will once again contest the representation of the teaching staff in elections that will determine the composition of the Sectoral Board during a period marked, among other issues, by the development of the new 2027-2031 educational framework agreement and by the search for solutions to combat the loss of teaching vocations, in a context of the profession's loss of prestige. The electoral process will serve to renew the unions' representatives for teachers and also to determine which organizations will have more weight in the negotiation of labor and educational conditions. Also at stake is the number of union releases for each organization, a field of dispute, because it has a direct impact on the capacity for influence.