Lilian Hernandez Osorio
La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, February 2, 2026, p. 11
Subject professors at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) consider that the direct increase in salary of 4 percent and 2 percent in benefits is “an insult” and is insufficient in the face of the accumulated deterioration of purchasing power.
Through a statement, teachers who receive their salary according to the hours they work and do not have a definitive contract at the national university point out that their working conditions are “precarious and worsen with each salary review, as it is insufficient.”
Last Thursday, the administrative secretary of the university, Tomás Rubio Pérez, and the General Secretary of the Autonomous Association of UNAM Academic Personnel (Aapaunam), Guadalupe Rodríguez Sámano, agreed to a 4 percent direct increase in salary, corresponding to the period from February 1, 2026 to January 31, 2027.
However, subject teachers accuse that this agreement does not respond to the real feelings of those who make up the majority of the institution’s total teaching staff, since they represent 60 percent of it with more than 26 thousand teachers, which is why they assure that this salary adjustment “is not only symbolic, but also deepens a structural inequality within the academic body itself.”
Although the statement does not specify how many subject teachers signed it, the document points out that with each salary review their working conditions worsen, since with salaries paid per hour and lack of stability, the precariousness of their work worsens.
“The disconnection between institutional negotiation and the needs of subject teachers has become evident. Therefore, it is not strange that in broad sectors the possibility of a strike breaking out is beginning to be discussed, not as a threat, but as a legitimate defense mechanism,” they warn in the text.
They state that their work cannot continue to be invisible, which is why they demand job stability measures and a salary review that truly recovers purchasing power.
