The main groups of Buenos Aires teachers' unions will begin a 48-hour strike this week, and will analyze whether or not to begin the 2010 school year. Teachers and professors from Buenos Aires City will carry out a two-day strike starting in the middle of the week, calling for better salaries and budgets.

The General Director for Cultura and Education in Buenos Aire, Mario Oporto, said that it "incomprehensible" and "exaggerated" to carry out another strike and protest when there are "only three weeks left until the end of the 2009 school year."

"It makes no sense for the union leaders to carry out stikes when two weeks of school were lost due to the H1N1 outbreaks," said the Education Ministry for Buenos Aires City, adding that "the current budget is higher than it has been in ten years."

Both jurisdictions said that they will not pay teachers for the two days of strikes during this week when students in both the city and the province will have only three days of classes.

The head of the Buenos Aires Education Federation (FEB), Mirta Petrocini, said that the 48-hour strike will be held with Suteba, UDA, AMET, and SADOP, all teachers unions, and that if the "provincial government still does not respond" to our claims, then the teachers will analyze whether or not to "begin the 2010 school year."

Suteba teachers union Secretary General Roberto Baradel supported the measures and said that "if there is no response from the government, the 2010 school year will begin with a conflict."

Baradel asked for "an increase in the educational budget and for talks regarding salaries," adding that there should be increases in the "budgets designated to fix over 160 schools, teacher costs, and social policies."

Oporto, during talks with a radio channel, said that "strikes are a valid tool during open conflicts, but this is not the case when it comes to these teachers, who have already received salarial increases this year and their payments were not stalled."

"I believe that it is a mistake," he held, after which he added that the measure is "incomprehensible."

The strike will begin in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Saavedra, where, according to union members, "primary schools, middle schools, music schools and special schools should have been built here, and in December 2007 60% of the work was done, and then Mauricio Macri took office and no more money was invested and the work is at a halt."