Representatives of the Education Union of Serbia held a meeting in Uzice with members of the District Board of Education of the Zlatibor District regarding the current situation in education. During the meeting, a proposal to amend the Regulation on coefficients, reduction of pedagogical administration, and the Special Collective Agreement for primary and secondary schools, as well as student dormitories, was presented. The situation regarding technological redundancies in the School Administration of Užice and competitions for admission for an indefinite period of time, as well as current problems in the work of trade union organizations, were discussed.
Mr. Valentina Ilić, president of the Education Union of Serbia and the Republic Board, emphasized that the priority is Special Collective Agreements and their implementation.
– We have noticed that in Serbia, local governments do not pay for transport to employees in education, instead, they organize supposedly regular transport. Due to the nature of the job, someone works two hours in one school, one in another, then in a third school… There are fewer and fewer children in schools, and employees in education have to work in more than two schools to fill the norm. That is why regular transport does not suit employees, because their employer is the school, not the local self-government. This means that the republic transfers funds to the local self-governments, and the local self-governments abuse it. I will present that
To the Ministry of Education as a problem that we have noticed – emphasized Ilić.
In addition to transportation, they also discussed the payment of jubilee awards, solidarity aid, as well as the Protocol on the dynamics of salary growth in education.
In recent years, health care has been forced, Ilić said, so that now the professor’s salary is in the range of a senior nurse’s salary. We calculated that by the end of the year the increase should be at least 30 percent, but also that the dynamics and a number of other procedures should be determined.
– The trade union has a lot of stake in taking care of its members, especially when it is taken into account that for years people have been working with as much as 30 percent of the norm. They must be employed, and the directors must advertise for those positions that exist. There is a lot of manipulation with employment, and our goal is that the trade union is not perceived as an opponent, but as a partner and collaborator – Ilić explained.
The common assessment is that it is very important for the trade union at the level of the republic to be aware of and follow the developments in local self-governments.
– We have several schools that are members of the trade union, and it is extremely important that the employees are well organized – said Dragovan Drašković, the president of the Council of Independent Trade Unions for several municipalities of the Zlatibor district with headquarters in Užice.
He added that through good cooperation with the Republican Board of Trade Unions in Education, employees can exercise their rights. The trade union fulfills its role through partnership with the local self-government of the Zlatibor District in order to solve certain problems.
– I’m not sure that all employees understand that, and in fact it concerns them and their workplaces – concluded Drašković.
