Monica Babuc, Minister of Education, Culture and Research: The 11.3% wage increase is a first step towards improving working conditions in the education sector

On the eve of the beginning of the new year of study, members of the General Council of the of Trade Union Federation of Education and Science of Moldova (FSEŞ) had a working meeting with the leadership of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research (MECC) and representatives of the Government, where they discussed a number of topics related to the situation in the education sector.

The agenda of the discussions focused on the level of salary in the branch, the results obtained by the FSEŞ in the process of negotiations with the authorities in order to increase the salaries of teachers and auxiliary staff, the situation of young specialists, the working conditions of the teachers.

According to Dumitru Ivanov, FSEŞ president, this meeting aims to strengthen the dialogue with the MECC in order to overcome the existing problems in the field of education and science. The trade union leader has made a declaration for taking actions as soon as possible to support the employees.

Ion Bulat, first deputy chairman of FSEŞ, informed that following several protest actions organized early in 2017, meetings with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Moldova, meetings of the Negotiation Commission, the authorities and trade unionists reached a consensus. Thus, starting with September 1, the salaries of the general and vocational-technical education teachers will be increased by 11.3%.

Monica Babuc, Minister of Education, Culture and Research, said that more attention should be paid to the communication process between the authorities and the teachers’ collectives and she showed herself open to develop the dialogue with the trade unions.

“The Government’s decision to raise salaries by 11.3% was a financially complicated one. But this decision is a first step in solving the requests from the teachers,” Monica Babuc stressed.

“We are worried about the situation in the branch and we are aware of the need for reforms. Over 42% of Moldovan teachers are retirees. Even the results of this year’s admission show that the least popular are the pedagogical specialties. There are several issues we need to reflect together to find solutions to the needs of teachers and society’s expectations of the educational system,” Monica Babuc said.

In this context, Oleg Budza, president of the National Trade Union Confederation of Moldova, expressed his hope that this meeting will lay the foundations for an efficient process of permanent dialogue between the authorities and the trade unionists in education and advocated reforming the wage system in the budgetary sphere.

Those present also discussed the perspectives on the endowment of educational institutions, the motivation of young people to come and work in the education system, the latest changes to the Education Code, the concept of the unitary wage system, issues related to optimization and liquidation of educational institutions and the tasks of trade union leaders in the context of reforms.

We mention that the teachers, supported by the trade unionists in education and other branches of the national economy, started the protest actions on January 17, 2017.

At that time, the trade unionists in the education asked for the salary for the 1st salary category of the Single Payroll Tariff Network with the size of the subsistence minimum from 1 January 2017; a 50% increase of the salary for teachers and teaching staff from 1 January 2017 and the unconditional annual recalculation of the amount of pensions for retired people in the workforce.

Department of mass media and international relations