Teachers on the strike

As a security guard, not a music teacher - that's how Tamara feels at her village school since January 20. It belongs to numerous educators across Serbia who, disappointed with the agreement between the representative unions and the authorities, continued their strike. Tamara and her colleagues hold classes, but abbreviated. That was the only way to, according to the Law on strike which has not seen any change since 1996. will be on strike.

The rest of the time at school, they take turns being on duty in case someone stops by. They are not expecting children or parents, but the labor inspectorate, the police or some politician from the local government.

"Threats came from the educational inspectorate, through the police and even the president of the municipality, as early as the weekend before we started the strike, as soon as word spread around the village," Tamara told "Vreme". "But all of them don't seem to understand - those children, students on the streets, they are our former students. How can we look them in the eye when they return to the village and tell people what is happening in Belgrade?"

GENERAL STRIKE DAY

Tamara hopes to see Friday, January 24 at her workplace, because then her school will completely stop work and thus participate in the announced general strike. It was announced by unrepresentative education unions, and the slogan "general strike" was heard at several student protests. The students themselves added to their demands to the state a call for employees to show "civil disobedience at workplaces". If it happens, it will be the first time that, at least according to book standards, Serbia has organized it.

"A general strike, no matter how it is organized, could only inflame protests and spread them to other sectors that are inert," explains Mario Reljanović, research associate of the Institute for Comparative Law in Belgrade, for "Vreme". "This strike, in general, not only in the sphere of education but also in other branches of work, would completely deprive the representative unions of their legitimacy. It would send a message that everyone works for themselves and according to their own conscience."

X FACTOR

In recent months, students have been protesting on the streets, but occasionally also educators, who have been protesting for a salary increase for more than six months. Their main demand was that the starting salary of teachers be equal to the national average.

"The state persistently rejected us in short order," Dušan Kokot, president of the Independent Union of Educational Workers of Serbia, told "Vreme". "And then the students appeared who stopped Serbia and worried the government. The story changed very quickly, because if the faculties don't work, that's one thing, but if the schools don't work, it's a much more serious matter."

Students were precisely that time-critical X factor in the equation of the relationship between the state and educational workers. The ruling coalition quickly formed a team for negotiations, which included even two ministers from the Government, and soon an agreement was reached with four representative trade unions of educators. According to him, teachers would receive two salary increases in 2025. As the national average salary is constantly increasing, according to the new agreement, teachers would have a salary at that level at one point, and already the next month it would fall below the average.

The negotiators' union explained this average flight as a result of the negotiations.

"However, the state promised to equalize the average salary in the country with theirs in the next three years," Dobrivoje Marjanović, president of the Union of Education Workers of Serbia, told Vreme.

Thus, the trade unionists reached out to the state and, as they say, put a moratorium on the strike.

"This possibility of a strike break does not exist in the law," explains Reljanović. "That would be like opening a man on the operating table and taking a break, then come back tomorrow. The man will die during that time. The essence of a strike is exactly continuity, so if you strike a break every now and then, it loses its point."

However, the president of the Union of Education Workers of Serbia says that he is offended that the trade unionists have suddenly become traitors.

"The situation is delicate, so they probably offered us this at a specific moment," he adds. "I'm not going into the reasons why right now."

SHAME IN FRONT OF CHILDREN

However, Tamara entered the reasons why. He does not speak for "Vreme" under his real name, because he says that "it is not yet time for such courage". But he adds that everyone in the village knows each other and that it would be clear to everyone that an agreement with the state would betray the students.

She herself has children who go to a school that is on strike in another city, and she travels to the village to work. She immediately sent support to those teachers to persevere and not care - she knows how they feel.

"The collective is the only thing we have left," she adds. "I don't know how I would continue to work without it."

This need for mutual support seems to have been noticed soon by others. Because the other parents of the school where Tamara's children go organized themselves in the middle of the teachers' strike and agreed through a telephone group of parents to gather in support of the teachers who are not working. According to Tamara, an hour after the message was sent, several hundred people gathered in front of the school. The teachers were also invited, who, he adds, "couldn't hide their delight that someone didn't make their decisions difficult these days, but patted them on the shoulder."

"WE WORK AND WE ARE ASHAMED"

Tamara's colleague Igor, from an elementary school near hers, still has to work. Of the 40 teachers in his school, seven were in favor of the strike. Since they were outvoted, he and the other six simply couldn't take it upon themselves to not come to class. Igor does not give his real name for the text, for the same reason as Tamara.

"We've been working for the second day and we're ashamed," Igor told Vreme, answering the phone during a long vacation. "Simply, people cannot do it on their own. I see that the children are also disturbed, nothing is clear to them."

Children, especially in elementary school, have a great need to talk to their Serbian teachers or class teachers about the situation in society or their own problems.

"The older brothers and sisters of those children are in blockades at the faculties, they report what is happening, and when the children ask their teacher what he thinks about it - what can he, and that is me, tell them?", adds Igor.

However, as the days go by, Igor hopes that his colleagues will change their minds. Because, according to the Law on Strike - for it to be legitimate - one of the basic conditions is that the majority votes to stop work. This article of the law protects the majority of schools in Serbia that have started any type of strike - complete suspension of work or reduction of classes. A simple majority is required, 50 plus 1.

"Mic by mic, one by one, when they see the others, I hope that some of the other colleagues will change their minds as well." Let us enter that Friday without work and I can look the children in the eyes, and let us finally become a real collective", says Igor.

MASS (NE)OBEDIENCE

Almost no one can list how many educational collectives in Serbia will be on strike at the end of January.

Although the authorities boasted at the beginning of the protest that as many as 80 percent of the 1700 schools in Serbia are working fully and 11 percent partially - data from the field says otherwise.

Entire cities began to refuse obedience, so every school in Čačak was locked on the first day of the protest, that is, teachers came to work - but on strike. Only two gymnasiums out of a total of 21 worked in Belgrade, but one of them had shortened classes.

Disobedient schools are at least 35 percent, and this is the data of the Independent Union of Educational Workers of Serbia from the beginning of the strike, while news came from other unions about 300 schools that are not working at all and another 300 that are only partially working.

Right from the beginning, Prime Minister Miloš Vučević and minister Slavica Đukić Dejanović competed to see who would more and more seriously threaten disobedient teachers with inspections and disciplinary violations. Minister Đukić Dejanović even appealed to the conscience of teachers.

"A huge number of children in primary school were prevented from going to their desks and studying. The parents were distraught, because they simply cannot go to work if they do not know where their children, who are between seven and 14 years old, are. A huge number of those children were included in the ban on learning," said Djukic Dejanovic during the week of the class boycott.

And the result was specific, numerous examples of disobedience followed, but from the ranks of civil servants appointed by the government.

Two school principals immediately resigned, and numerous educational inspectors refused to go out into the field and write disciplinary proceedings against teachers who show rebellion by holding shortened classes or completely stopping work.

"Mass is something that protects all workers, not only educators", says Reljanović. "Experience from previous strikes shows that, when the entire collective goes on strike, the employer usually fires a few of the loudest ones, but these are examples from the economy. None of those directors who come from the collective and who return to it after the mandate will dare to fire the teacher."

And then came another blow - directly from those who made the deal. Danilo Gligorić, the president of the representative Trade Union of Education Workers of Serbia, resigned from that position a day before the strike began. Gligorić is one of the four people who signed the agreement with the Government of Serbia.

"I didn't teach today. I had to and wanted to stand by my colleagues with whom I have been working for 30 years", Gligorić explained his decision on January 20. By the way, he is a teacher at a school in Vračar in Belgrade.

STUDENTS ARE THE KEY

Dušan Kokot is the trade unionist who publicly called his colleagues for a general strike on January 24. He did it on the plateau in front of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, during the protest of educators on January 20.

He then called the protest a plenum of educators and asked "who is in favor of a general strike?" As the crowd responded with thunderous applause, Kokot declared this proposal - adopted.

"It wasn't my idea," explains Kokot. "It is a student idea, they put it in their demands, and during our protests, this thought crystallized. That's why I wanted to see what the colleagues who obviously came because they were dissatisfied thought about it. And they showed me. With a general strike, we want to return to the students' demands, they are the key."

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

And the idea that everything stops in the center of the cities of Serbia, that bus drivers get out of their vehicles, workers lock up their tobacconists and shops, and that televisions and websites do not work, even for 15 minutes, as a memorial to the 15 victims who were carried away by the canopy on the railway station in Novi Sad, but primarily negligence and corruption in the state sector, perhaps it is possible. But what after? "I would like them to stop calling us and ask if only the teachers who came to the village from Belgrade are on strike or if the locals are also in favor of the strike. I would like people to simply stop and think - why we are on strike and what we want", says Tamara.

Through social networks, instructions are sent to the private sector on how they can show disobedience to the regime, and they share messages about not going to the store and restaurants for a day in order to reduce the flow of VAT funds into the state coffers. During the days when the teacher's strike was the first news in the media, another trade union member - Aleksandar Markov, who for years was the head of the Forum of Belgrade Gymnasiums, resigned. This union has about 6000 members, it is not representative, but its influence among high schools in the capital is great. "It is difficult to predict what will happen next. But one thing is clear, the teachers became disillusioned with the unions and decided to exclude them from their struggle. They decided to go alone. Maybe it's the path of all the rest of us", says this trade unionist for "Vreme".