Junior lecturers, teaching assistants, and external lecturers from universities nationwide met on Wednesday to discuss their conditions. The junior staff has complained that university professors refuse to meet with them to negotiate their salaries and working conditions.
The junior staff is responsible for correcting homework assignments and conducting study sessions and laboratory learning. Over 4,000 members of the junior staff are employed as external lecturers, and as such do not receive pensions or other benefits or the possibility of promotion.
Members of the junior staff warned that after declaring a work dispute, they plan to stop teaching and to disrupt the exams schedule. If they strike, it will be the third major strike in universities in the past year. Students struck in the spring of 2007 in response to plans to raise tuition, and the senior academic staff went on strike in the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year.