For the first time, in the many years she has been working at the school, Ana Dimitrijević will probably not receive a text message on her phone on the sixth of the month. The one about payment of salary.
Dimitrijević became the new president last month Forum of Belgrade high schools which are still resisting numerous attacks and intimidation by the state, so not one of them is still working regularly. She is among the teachers who were on strike throughout February, and the Ministry of Education announced that these educators - they will not receive a salary.
Many have already stated that striking teachers have sacrificed the most of all workers. Because it's one thing not to work for a day during a general strike, to take time off or sick leave, and it's quite another to refuse to work out of principle and for the sake of fulfilling student and educational requirements.
That is why donations have already started to be collected for teachers for whom the non-arrival of salaries will be a financial shock bomb.
Aware of the consequences
"You know how, we were aware of the possible consequences when we entered into a kind of civil disobedience," Dimitrijević told Vreme. "Educators made the most sacrifices and it means to us that people want to help." But it would mean much more to us if more professions also stopped working, if the workers of the post office, EPS, GSP, for example, did what we did."
For the most vulnerable educators, single parents or teachers where both parents work in a school and rent an apartment, for example, the Forum has organized itself to help colleagues.
"We will make ends meet, there are also the salaries of our spouses and families," says the English teacher at the Ninth High School in Belgrade and adds, with dark humor, that "we live in a consumer society anyway, so we all need to cut back on everything."
Once a student - forever a student
For Dimitrijević, it is natural that teachers made the most sacrifices for the student cause, because they are, after all, educators.
"Once someone is our student, they are forever, and all those students passed our classes," she says. "When they come to school with their children, we say that we are in the same class, it's an incredible relationship. No matter how much they love it, they will always call the class that way or they will call us in passing - good afternoon, teacher".
They are breaking the law, and they are accusing us.
In total chaos, Ana Dimitrijević, who leads the Forum that first called for a total suspension of classes in January, and while her colleagues are on strike, says:
"The legislator, in this case the state, is planning to cancel our salaries, which will directly violate the law." We didn't get any decisions about the disciplinary procedure, some directors sent only 50 percent of the salary for calculation, some didn't want to send, so they reprimanded them."
How many are there?
The relevant ministry said that only 50 schools are not working regularly, but Dimitrijević explains that civil servants actually counted only schools that are in total blockade all the time.
"If you have three people who have declared that they are working, the state considers that those schools are working. It is a parallel reality, a farce and a teaching simulation. Especially in gymnasiums, where classes cannot be organized if a certain number of teachers are on strike or students do not come to school," added the president of the Forum.
He gives the example of the First High School, where the majority of teachers work, but there are no students who boycott classes.
He says that about 80 percent of their parents give them support, which means a lot to them.
The forum is expanding nationwide.
By the end of March, the Forum will become a republic union.
"We are creating a trade union that should restore the reputation of the trade union association of educational workers." "We already had this idea before, but now we hurried with it because a large number of schools and individuals from more than ten cities in Serbia contacted us," says Dimitrijević.
He hopes that they will be able to restore the confidence of teachers in the unions, which was massively shaken after the representative unions made deal with the state at the beginning of the year.
