The teaching staff of the Faculty of Philosophy demands that the Regulation on norms and standards of working conditions be repealed, that their salaries be returned and that the process of changing the Law on Higher Education be stopped.
Professors Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade they have entered into the legally prescribed procedure for launching strike. On Thursday, they met with the dean and informed him of their intention, Professor of the Faculty of Philosophy Dubravka Stojanović confirmed to Vremena.
"I think all faculties should go that way. According to our assessment, a strike is the best way, because it puts us within the legal framework, so if we go on strike, we will strike according to the law. With the current suspension of classes, we are outside the law, and according to the law we have a stipulated minimum work, which the students accepted. Through this minimum work, we could complete a whole series of pre-examination obligations of the students and thus legally, with the support of the students, make up for a significant part of the classes," Stojanović said.
He says that the vast majority of the teaching staff, members of the union, voted for a strike in which the faculty administration and scientific researchers would not participate.
She noted that the strike demands concern only relations from labor law: to abolish the Regulation on norms and standards of working conditions of universities and faculties for activities financed from the budget, to return their salaries and to stop the process of changing the Law on Higher Education with the help of the Working Group formed by the Ministry of Education.
By the aforementioned decree passed by the Government of Serbia at the end of March, as a kind of punishment for university professors who supported the student rebellion, the 40-hour working week of the teaching staff at the faculties was reduced to 35 hours of teaching and preparation for teaching and to only five hours of scientific research work, instead of the previous ratio, which implies 20 hours each for teaching and scientific research work.
Dismantling the system and the validity of diplomas
Stojanović points out that this decree not only deprives professors of a large part of their salary, but that it destroys their accreditations, because professors have an exact number of hours for each subject.
"This destroyed accreditation, and when accreditations are destroyed, diplomas are destroyed as well, because then they no longer correspond to what was accredited. This is a very serious destruction of the system, including the validity of diplomas," Stojanović warned.
Also, at the beginning of May, the Government of Serbia established a Working Group for the analysis of the current state of financing and reforming of higher education in Serbia and for the drafting of the Law on Higher Education. Professors see the formation of the Working Group as another type of pressure on higher education, which aims to abolish the autonomy of universities.
They note that out of 20 members of the Working Group, seven of them supported the Serbian Progressive Party, which is why they fear that the new law could have the same consequences as the disputed University Law, known as the "Seselj Law", which was adopted 27 years ago.
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Less than ten days after the new section of the Miloš Veliki highway was opened, JP Putevi Srbije announced that work on the Laz tunnel is underway. It is not known what works are involved, but although it was previously announced that the entire section is safe for traffic, the public warned about the insecurity of the longest tunnel on this highway.
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