Union and worker organizations in the university and higher secondary education sectors from at least 10 states in the country warned about the critical financial situation facing public higher education in Mexico, derived — they noted — from budget cuts and an insufficient allocation of resources that threatens institutional stability, academic quality and the future development of public universities.
In a unitary statement, the organizations reported that they sent a formal communication to the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo; to the Secretary of the Interior, Rosa Icela Rodríguez Velázquez, and to authorities from the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, in which they warn that the current budget policy deepens the deterioration of public universities and higher secondary education institutions.
The university workers pointed out that, if the current salary caps are maintained and without the allocation of irreducible extraordinary resources in the Expenditure Budget, thousands of administrative and academic workers could receive income below the General Minimum Wage.
Faced with this scenario, the organizations, among which are the Workers’ Union of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, among others, demanded to guarantee that no university salary is located below the General Minimum Wage through an immediate adjustment of the tabulators.
Also, they called for the creation of a Contractual Minimum Wage and a Professional Minimum Wage that recognize the training, experience and specialization of university staff; establish a National Salary Recovery Program with real and progressive increases to recover lost purchasing power, and ensure a strategic and sustained investment in public higher education, conceived as a commitment to the scientific, technological and social development of the country.
The signatories warned that, without responsible and immediate budgetary action, public higher education will be relegated to a logic of mere subsistence, with consequences for millions of students and for the future of the country.
