Srbija
Bosna i Hercegovina
Slovenija
Associations of school-teaching assistants on Tuesday held a protest rally outside the government and parliament headquarters in Zagreb's St. Mark's Square, state agency Hina said, without saying how many people took part in the event. Teaching assistants, who help children with disabilities, demanded the same rights already afforded to teachers, such as open-ended employment contracts, and better wages.
Head of the education union Preporod, Zeljko Stipic, said that Croatia was the leading EU country in terms of the share of precarious work in overall employment, and called school-teaching assistants "a typical example of that."
"Teaching assistants have a very responsible job because they help students with disabilities and they deserve to get permanent work contracts," he said. "This is their main demand, and once it is met, the usual labor legislation can then be applied to teaching assistants, which also means unions would be able to regulate issues concerning their status through collective bargaining agreements," Stipic told the crowd.
Stipic said that the government cannot refuse their demand because "the yearly cost for 4,000 teaching assistants (in the country) amount to half of one Rafale fighter jet." Neither Stipic nor Hina clarified how much the recently acquired Rafale fighter jets cost as several different figures were thrown around in the media and by the government.
Iva Tadic, head of a group for teaching assistants, said that in 2014 the hourly wage of teaching assistants was 25 kuna (€3.3). "The minimum base pay at the time was 2,779 kuna (€368)," Tadic continued, presumably referring to the salary set by the government for employees in the education sector, who also claim an array of various bonuses.
"Now the minimum base pay is 3,624 kuna (€480) and our hourly wage is still 25 kuna (€3.3)," she said. Teaching assistants are usually not classified as salaried staff and instead work for hourly wages, based on temporary contracts.
The head of a school for education of adults, Ljiljana Igric, said that the issue of financing school-teaching assistants was a problem that had been ignored for years, "which was why many had emigrated from the country," and another protester, Suzana Resetar, said that the parents also support the fight of teaching assistants for their labor rights because it also means fighting for children's rights - notably the right to education.
(€1 = 7.54 kuna)
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