There will be more discussions about salary increases: Education Union leaders expect to reach an agreement with the Government

The Education Union expects to reach an agreement with the Government of Montenegro within ten days regarding the proposed amendments to the Sectoral Collective Agreement (GKU) for the field of education, said the president of the workers' organization yesterday after a meeting with representatives of the education sector. Radomir Božović.

According to him, Article 22 of the Civil Code is "disputable", and the discussion on it "has been left for the coming days".

"There were no representatives of the Ministry of Finance (MF). We only talked about technical matters with representatives of the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MESI). We went through each article article by article. Only Article 22 is problematic for us, the rest are good. We expect an agreement soon," said Božović, adding that they were "satisfied with the discussions."

If union leaders agree to the offer of the education and finance departments, the Government could soon make a decision that would define all the allowances from Article 22 of the GKU, but also specify an increase in allowances for department heads by two percent, and for acquired titles by 0,2 percent.

This decision, according to the proposal of two government departments, would define all the additions, that is, all the items under tables A, B, C, D in Article 22 of the General Code of Civil Procedure for the field of education.

"The decision would specify the increase in defined allowances in such a way that the department headship would increase by 2 percent, and the acquired title by 0,2 percent. Depending on the calculations obtained in the projected costs for salaries on an annual basis and the actual costs paid through the application of the centralized salary calculation system (COZ), a certain recomposition of the increase is possible for other types of allowances - the comparative situation will be known during the trial period of the COZ for preschool and secondary education," the proposal of the two ministries states.

The main board of the Education Union issued a statement after the session, emphasizing that the Government's proposal was "the basis for further negotiations."

On September 1, school union leaders held a public meeting in assembly halls across the country to express their dissatisfaction with the new, centralized salary calculation. They said that the move to centralized calculation had reduced teachers' salaries by 10 to 50 euros.

The education and finance departments emphasized that institutions have been calculating teachers' salaries differently so far, some legally and some illegally. These two departments have previously stated on several occasions that the differences in the current calculation and the COZ relate to the controversial order of calculating salary supplements (classroom leadership, work in two or more institutions). They also claim that, in a good number of schools, these supplements were also calculated for teachers who are on sick leave.