Cyprus Education Ministry support-programme teachers suspend strike for 15 days

Teachers working under fixed-term and indefinite-term contracts in the Cyprus Ministry of Education’s support programmes have postponed the 24-hour strike scheduled for Monday. The decision was taken at an extraordinary general meeting on Friday morning: the action was suspended for 15 days to give the government time to honour its commitments.

More than 150 workers attended the meeting, and the discussion lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes. The decision was announced by two trade unions — OEKDY-SEK and PASEV-PEO.

On Wednesday, teachers’ representatives met with Education Minister Athena Michaelidou. According to the unions, the ministry committed to immediately launching the recruitment process across all support programmes, for both permanent and fixed-term positions, starting in the current school year.

The workers’ main demand concerns the summer months. At present, teachers on indefinite-term contracts receive unemployment benefit during the three-month school holidays. The unions are calling for it to be replaced with a special income-replacement allowance, paid retroactively from the summer of 2026. Their second demand is a written commitment from the minister to announce vacancies across all programmes, as provided for in the draft law, so that the small number of workers who have not yet been transferred to indefinite-term contracts are also covered.

“We are now moving on to discuss the two outstanding issues,” said PASEV-PEO Secretary General Andreas Kounnis. He described the proposal for the allowance as “a new development and an improvement that we view positively”.

According to the unions, the minister promised to respond on the entire matter “within 15 days and in a positive spirit”. Workers have postponed the strike for precisely that period.