The president of the Dominican Teachers Association (ADP) says that the general secretary of the PLD, Reinaldo Pared Perez, should not mix politics with the union’s fight, nor should he pick up a stone “for the littlest guys.” Eduardo Hidalgo understands the worries of Pared Perez, who is following the PLD membership in all the institutions where they exercise public or private roles, but says he should not assess the behavior of the union president, because the salary struggle involves several state entities where there are a number of party representatives.
“For example, in the case of the union, fine, there is the ADP president, but the other part of the conflict has come about through the attitude of poor communications, of other members of the PLD who are Ministry of Education officials, beginning with Minister Josefina Pimentel,” he said. Hidalgo says that if the PLD is going to ask for accounting, they will also have to convene 45% of the teachers, because they are members of the party and when they submitted the 20% wage increase for their consideration, 98.95% rejected it.
The number of teachers registered in the ADP is over 62,000. They said that the political struggles were over in 2012, and will return in 2016. They added that when a teacher goes to buy something in a corner store he or she has to pay the same price as everyone else, so that because of this his struggle is union-based and more aggressive in its demands, and not political. Moreover, he hopes that President Danilo Medina includes 28,000 teachers in the one million people that he is committed to get out of poverty, because they earn salaries of between RD$8000 and RD$15,000 per session and the family food basket is now priced at over RD$23,000.