Teachers threaten to block school appointments

The union representing Greek primary school teachers, known by its acronym DOE, Tuesday declared that it will fight the implementation of a law approved by the leftist-led government introducing stricter criteria for the appointment of school principals, part of a broader evaluation scheme for the civil service demanded by the country’s international creditors.

Members of the union aim to boycott the process of appointing new principals to Greek primary schools, which is expected to start in the coming weeks. “The government is taking the first step in implementing its commitments based on the fourth memorandum,” the union said in a statement. It also slammed the coalition for reneging on pledges to reverse an evaluation scheme for civil servants undertaken by a series of previous governments at the behest of creditors.

“The government’s promises to abolish the institutional framework for the evaluation-manipulation [scheme] proved to be false,” the union said, referring to a series of laws for reform of the civil service passed by previous governments.

Since Greece signed its first international bailout in 2010, each administration has balked at foreign creditors’ calls to cut the state payroll. The civil servants’ evaluation scheme was primarily aimed at weeding out lax workers or those who got their jobs on false pretenses while a mobility scheme was aimed at moving workers out of overstaffed parts of the public sector to other areas.