ZAGREB, October 24, 2019 – Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Thursday that he did not think that the ongoing strike of primary and secondary school teachers was a good thing and added that it was creating a bad atmosphere among parents.
“Talks were conducted and we are open for further talks,” said Plenković at the start of a cabinet meeting in Zagreb.
Considering the fact that the industrial action is in the form of a rotating strike taking place in different counties every working day, Plenković said that this also created “an unnecessary atmosphere of pressure on counties.”
He called on leaders of the striking unions to sit at the negotiating table and to acknowledge what the authorities have done concerning primary and secondary school teachers whose work is respected and who are important stakeholders for the reform of the education system.
Plenković recalled that the overall increase in the base wage in the public sector’s services would be 18% plus tax breaks, which leads to an increase of more than 20%.
“These are marked increases in the monthly income that cannot be compared to any earlier periods,” the premier said.
Primary and secondary school teachers’ unions launched a nationwide strike on 10 October. Since then they have been staging rotating strikes across counties.
Just before the start of today’s government meeting, Education Minister Blaženka Divjak said that “the current situation is untenable”, pointing out the importance of dialogue between the school unions and the government.
A meeting to this effect is expected in the coming days.
She reiterated that school unions were against a solution of raising the wage base for all as they insist that this move would not compensate the gap in their wages and are therefore demanding that the job complexity index be amended.
More news about the strike can be found in the Politics section.
