The main board of the Union of Education did not accept the offer of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education to increase their salary by 45 percent in the next two years, because the method and dynamics are not acceptable to them, Radomir Božović from the Union said in Colors of the Morning.
This decision was not made unanimously because, as Božović says, the Main Board has 47 members from all over Montenegro, and that cannot be expected.
"The offer was such that our salary would increase by 1 percent from January 15, another 15 percent from January 2024 and 10 percent in 2025. In the previous period, we bid with certain percentages, so in the end it did not happen," said Božović.
He reminds that the original proposal of the ministries was to give them 20 percent from the first January.
This would not be acceptable to the educational community of Montenegro and they are asking for an increase of 65 percent, said Olivera Leković.
"We have been asking for the last year to increase the coefficient, because it has not been increased across Europe and today we have professors, master's degrees with 40 years of experience who receive a 380 euro pension. A university professor has a coefficient three times higher than a high school professor, and that is not OK," Lekovic points out.
He says that they took the position that 45 percent is suddenly something below which they should not go.
Commenting on the allegations that the educators have been silent for the past thirty years, Božović confirms that they did become silent after the 2000 strike.
"The Government didn't sit idly by either, so they tried to scare us. First, they tried to break our Trade Union in 2013 by creating a parallel trade union that would belong to the Federation of Trade Unions, so that they could give us permanent solutions after 10 years. When you always have 15 to 20 percent of the employees who are on a temporary basis and who are given solutions only when they are recognized by the field and the ties are pulled, you cannot ask them to stop and go out into the streets, lock the school," said Božović.
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