Lebanese parties agree to include private schools in wage hike

BEIRUT: All political parties have agreed to include private school teachers in the wage hike, and private schools will not be allowed to illegitimately increase tuition fees, Lebanon’s education minister said after a meeting between teachers and lawmakers Tuesday.

“All parliamentary blocs have agreed on the unity,” Minister Elias Bou Saab said in a news conference after the meeting, “and I am confident that the ranks and salary scale will include the rights of private school teachers.”

The meeting, joining the head of the Association of Private School Teachers, Nehme Mahfoud, with lawmakers representing different political groups, was called by the head of the Finance and Budget Parliamentary Committee, MP Ibrahim Kanaan.

It came six days after Parliament postponed action on the wage hike over protests, including the exclusion of private school teachers from the proposal.

Having lobbied for the draft law as part of the Union Coordination Committee for three years, the private school teachers announced that the exclusion would ruin the recently launched academic year.

Assuring that the wage hike will not deprive the teachers of their rights, Bou Saab announced that his ministry has launched a research to study the tuition increase in private schools for the last three years.

“We are examining which schools started increasing tuition since three years ago,” Bou Saab explained, “and to reveal who will have a legitimate right to slightly increase tuition because of the wage hike.”

Private school principals had warned that the increase of teachers’ wages would lead to an immediate increase in tuition, which prompted parents to oppose the pay rise fearing it will be counterproductive to them.

However, Bou Saab called on the parents to “play an active role inside their children’s schools” and elect a committee that will have a say in the tuition increase.

“No increase in school tuition can become legal without the parents’ approval,” Bou Saab declared, calling on parents to review the schools’ budget before the deadline of their submission to the ministry on Jan. 31, 2015.

While the tuition controversy has been frequently cited by opponents of the wage hike.

“We hope that Speaker Nabih Berri will send back the draft to the Parliament’s General Committee in two weeks when the lawmakers finish studying it,” Mahfoud said at the news conference, explaining that the other main excuse for not including private school teachers in the law were irrelevant.

“We are not subject to the private sector workers labor law,” the unionist said in response to some lawmakers’ claim after the last week’s session that the Parliament does not have the jurisdiction to legislate on what concerns private sector employees. “We are managed by a law approved by the Parliament, which regulates all what concerns our wages and benefits.”