Kurdistan Teachers Union threatens to take strike action over allowances.
The Kurdistan Teachers Union (KTU) threatened to declare national strike action starting at the new academic year, if the Regional Authority fails to meet the union demand of restoring Kurdish teachers’ allowances.
The Executive body of the KTU, in its last meeting in Erbil, a few days ago decided to issue the warning to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and stated that if the KRG fails to respond positively, then the union will declare full strike action across Iraqi Kurdistan.
The union move came about as a result of the decision of the KRG/Iraq to cut back the 125,000 diners (About $100 US) allowances Kurdish teachers used to receive. The justification of this move by the KRG is that it is amending the level of salaries and allowances in Iraqi Kurdistan to bring them in line with the rest of Iraq.
Affan Nakshabandi the head of the KTU union said “we submitted a request to the KRG Prime Minister to reverse this unjust decision and restore the pay allowance to Kurdish teacher. The request also stated that if the union request is not met then the KTU threatens that will hold full strike action at the start of next academic year, September 2008 across all provinces of Kurdistan/Iraq”.