Disruption to the Croatian school year next week.
A strike in primary and secondary schools and universities will begin on Friday, 25 September, and will last several days. The decision was made by the strike committee of the education unions, reports Slobodna Dalmacija on September 19, 2015.
Professors will suspend classes, but Branimir Mihalinec, president of the Independent Trade Union of Employees in Secondary Schools, has confirmed that parents will be able to bring children to the schools where children will be taken care of during the strike. “We will take care of children, we do not want anyone to get hurt, but nothing more”, said Mihalinec, indicating that there will be no classed. At universities, where lectures have not started yet, there will probably be no exams.
The union association, made of unions which represent the majority of employees in primary, secondary and higher education, will be joined by the teachers from the Preporod union led by Željko Stipić, whose more than 60 percent of members voted in favor of participation in the strike.
Unions are rebelling against the government’s decision to reject their demands to increase wages in the education sector by four percent, even though the government recently accepted a similar proposal for healthcare workers. They claim that the education system is the one which has until now suffered most of the cuts, and reject the claims of their union colleague Spomenka Avberšek from the Independent Trade Union of Healthcare who accused them of deceiving the public. She said that the employees in education system have already received compensation for some of the previous cuts, while the healthcare workers received their compensation only now.
“Instead of supporting thousands of teachers and her colleagues, Spomenka Avberšek has supported this government for four years, not realizing that the government’s policy is in contravention with the social democratic and trade union values. Unfortunately, it seems that Ms. Avberšek is obviously still trying to break up the trade unions in the interest of the ruling parties”, say the opposing union members. Minister Mornar said that the government currently has no money to increase the salaries in the education sector, but that they are ready to talk about it immediately after the elections, provided the current government remains in power.
