Teachers are waiting / They will receive 500 euros in September, their salaries will increase by ten percent from January – postoj.sk

In September, they will receive 500 euros, starting in January their salaries will increase by ten percent. Teachers will get an average salary of 300 euros a month. Higher salaries were announced by Heger together with Matovič and the trade unionists without Minister of Education Branislav Gröhling from SaS. Almost a month after the biggest teachers’ protest in recent years and after long weeks of coalition conflicts over salary increases in education, an agreement was reached between the state and trade unions. Employees in state and public administration, including teachers and non-pedagogical workers in education, will receive a one-time allowance of 500 euros in September. Starting in January, the salaries of teaching staff will increase by ten percent, for others by seven percent. From September next year, it will be a twelve percent increase for teachers and ten percent for others. In total, one billion euros will be spent on higher salaries. The contract is concluded until the end of August 2024. “There will be a clause in the collective agreement on the basis of which we will be able to open the topic of salary increases. We will probably conduct new negotiations with the new government,” said Pavel Ondek, the head of school trade unions. Thanks to the increase, teachers can improve by hundreds of euros per month. As Ondek stated, salaries will be significantly increased for beginning teachers (by approximately 250 euros) and kindergarten teachers, who currently have the lowest salaries. In the case of cooks, it will be an increase of 130 euros. Prime Minister Eduard Heger, Minister of Finance Igor Matovič, Minister of Labor Milan Krajniak, KOZ president Monika Uhlerová and president of school trade unions Pavel Ondek announced the results of collective negotiations between the government and trade unions in a press release. At the same time, he announced that they had ended the strike emergency. “There might not have been a protest and a strike if the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance had made this decision earlier. I’m sorry,” he said on the press release. “The important thing is that the agreement was finally successful,” Prime Minister Heger immediately responded. According to Ondek, in some cases the real value of the salary may decrease. “We’ll see what practice brings, but we also have to take inflation into account,” he added. The head of the finance department, Matovič, did not specify where he wants to get the money for higher wages. He said that there will be a separate press release about it. The increase was announced without Gröhling More money for education workers was one of the priorities of the program statement of the government and Minister of Education Branislav Gröhling (SaS). The one on the press where Heger and Matovič announced the salary increase was not there. When asked why Gröhling was not present, the prime minister responded: “We were based on the approved government resolution on the signatories and negotiators of collective bargaining.” On Facebook, the head of the education department appreciated that “our demands were finally heard.” SaS head Richard Sulík also expressed his satisfaction with the announced salary increase on the social network. “Our several-month-old effort for higher salaries for teachers and employees in education was heard today. Even in Excel, education is always in the top rows,” he wrote. On Tuesday, Gröhling confirmed to Denník N that he was only at the first meeting regarding the salary increase. “After that, debates between the government office, the Ministry of Finance and the trade union take place within the framework of collective bargaining. Minister Krajniak and I were no longer present,” he said in the interview. “I would love to sit there and be a part of it. But I told the prime minister my clear position and I told other colleagues. That was the end of it for me. I don’t know if I would be useful in further debates.” The agreement was pushed back by the dispute between the ministers. It was the conflict between Igor Matovič and Branislav Gröhling that hindered the agreement on salary increases for many weeks. They accused each other of taking teachers hostage. For several weeks, Igor Matovič came up with a proposal that combined a ten percent increase in salaries from July with an increase in taxes on alcohol, gambling and rich companies. However, this was unacceptable to SaS, which wanted the money for salaries to go from excessive tax collection. The dispute between the ministers was also criticized by the participants of the teachers’ protest in June. “Are we to blame for the fact that two ministers are arguing and cannot come to an agreement? Should we solve it?” they said at the Bratislava assembly. They warned that if nothing changed, they would stop teaching in September. Matovič called Gröhling the “alcohol minister” who is blocking higher salaries for teachers. The latter accused him of blackmail and squandering public funds through the family package. He did not like the fact that Matovič wants to give four hundred million euros for free time vouchers and will not give funding for teachers’ salaries or school equipment. At the end of today’s press release, the leader of OĽaNO stated that he wants to start talking to teachers about the “ring room”. “I would like for us to fight together now, so that our ring fee system gets going and that in the end the children also enjoy it and develop their talent.” The last time teachers’ salaries were increased during the tenure of Minister of Education Martina Lubyová from the SNS in 2019 and 2020. The starting salary of a primary and secondary school teacher is currently around 915 euros gross. The starting salary of a cleaner or cook is about 580 euros gross. According to analysts’ estimates, Slovak schools are missing more than a thousand teachers this school year. In 2025, it may be up to around 8,600. In relation to the salary of university-educated people, the salaries of teachers in Slovakia are very low compared to their colleagues in OECD countries. Three years ago, teachers in our country had only 72 percent of the wages of university-educated employees, while the average in the countries of the European Union was 90 percent. They were worse off than us only in Italy and Hungary.