The Provincial Education Workers' Union rejected the wage increase announced by Governor Claudio Poggi and argued that the 20% paid in stages is not enough to restore teachers' purchasing power in San Luis.
The union said the sector's wage situation is undergoing a historic setback. According to its analysis, provincial teacher pay measured in real terms has fallen to March 2005 levels, the lowest point in the last 21 years.
UTEP also questioned the wage structure. While provinces such as Buenos Aires, Chubut and Santa Cruz have fully remunerative teacher salaries, San Luis records only 67.9% remunerative components, below the national average of 81%.
That composition means almost one third of teacher income is paid through non-remunerative sums. For the union, that practice damages seniority, bonuses, leaves and future pensions, turning the nominal improvement into a partial relief of low wage quality.
The union report used as reference a benchmark position: a grade-school teacher with a single shift and ten years of seniority. By March 2026, San Luis appears as the province with the largest loss of teacher purchasing power in the country.
According to UTEP, the basic salary fell 49.8% in real terms compared with September 2023, while take-home pay lost 52% in the same period. To recover that purchasing level, the union says an immediate real increase of 52% would be needed.
The organisation again demanded a true wage recovery and the urgent conversion of non-remunerative sums into formal pay. Its criticism is that staged increases work as patches rather than as a sustained income recovery policy.
The conflict places Poggi's government before a sensitive front: the tension between fiscal order, wage spending and deterioration in public education. For San Luis, the teachers' debate is no longer limited to the percentage increase, but to wage quality and education's place in provincial policy.
