VHeadline Venezuela News: Edgar Brazan, president of the Venezuelan Teachers' Association says that despite a call by the Education Ministry, some 90% of teachers and professors across the nation have joined the protest launched by several teachers unions.

At the Venezuelan Experimental School, Bazan said that the strike was not politically motivated ... "we are forced to defend our collective agreement and against the eradication of teaching as a career. We want improvements in teachers' salaries or at the very least some balance with the rest of public sector salaries." He says strike action has been taken to support the demands of over 100,000 who do not have any government guarantee of employment stability and explains that it is necessary to implement a competitive system of academic credentials and/or graduate studies.

A meeting was scheduled for 10:00 a.m. this morning at Education Ministry HQ in Caracas where a document was to be delivered with a series of requests to be handed over to Education Minister Navarro, including a request for an update to the teachers' collective contract, which expired three years ago. The Association says it is not willing to sign up a brief improvised document that has been discussed by three pro-Chavez associations and says a referendum may be called to set a deadline for a solution to pending issues and that the government is on statutory 120 day notice of a general strike ... "the time has come where the teachers unions must, fearlessly, go out on the streets to defend their rights ... Constitutional rights and others related to the profession as a whole."

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