Other faculties will also support the humanities academics’ protests due to low salaries

“It is understandable that this makes other faculties nervous as well. It is possible to expect that the wave of protests will be wider than in the past,” Vice-Chairman of the University Academic Senate Andrej Farkaš, who works at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, told Novinkám a Práva.

Teachers and students of humanities and social sciences have been leading loud protests against gross underfunding for almost a year. Because of the rising inflation, cantors began to leave universities because they would earn more money even in elementary schools.

The unions of the Faculty of Philosophy pointed to the unfairly set tariff tables, which allow people in the same position in different faculties to have basic salaries that differ by up to 40 thousand crowns. And just for example associate professors of humanities receive the bottom of the table and have a salary comparable to a saleswoman.

Academics continue to wait in vain for higher wages, they are preparing more protests

Homemade

Minister of Education Mikuláš Bek (STAN) accused university senates of “selfishness”. They are the supreme authority that decides on the distribution of money. At Charles University, most of the medical and natural science fields, which have not yet played for low salaries, hold the majority.

Bek negotiated an extra 800 million crowns for the universities to compare salaries, of which the UK will receive 150 million. In addition, he set a condition that the schools would receive only three-quarters of the promised amount in advance and the rest after the Ministry of Fair Tables agreed. And if the university did not meet the conditions, it would lose the given money in the following year.

But it turns out that the promised money for unifying the tables is only small. The consensus is that the new tariffs would meet slightly above the average level of the current spread. According to information from Novinek and Práva, even at faculties where teachers have high salaries, tariffs would be reduced by up to half from one year to the next.

We’re still thinking about it. The students of the Faculty of Philosophy agree that someone will break into the class

Homemade

At another college, where the tariff table also allows variances, they even refuse to apply for additional money for salaries. Together, they would get several million there, but there are fears that subsequent labor disputes could run into hundreds of millions.

According to preliminary calculations, Charles University would need at least a billion to unify the table and at the same time avoid the risks of losing in court.

The Czech Conference of Rectors and the Council of Universities have been pointing out for a long time that universities lack ten billion a year. And that is the amount that would probably solve the problems. In that case, for example, the UK would receive three billion and could unite the tables to the upper range.

Outrage erupted on Friday last week when the university senate voted by a rare majority that “the minister’s strong push for a very rapid introduction of uniform tariffs without precise parameters and ensuring sufficient funding is destabilizing and threatening universities”.

He also agreed that the situation would lead to the dismissal of teachers with the lowest salaries. In addition, the Senate stated that the minister solves most problems by questioning their existence.

Rectors: The money promised by the Ministry of Education for security measures is not enough

Science and schools

The Ministry of Education objected to this, saying that universities, like other employers, have an obligation to provide the same salary for a comparable position.

“The area of ​​labor law relations is within the self-governing competence of universities, and it is therefore their duty to ensure that their remuneration policies are in compliance with the Labor Code,” the department’s press department wrote to Novinkám a Práv in a statement.

According to him, more precise parameters for awarding money to compare salary differences are still being prepared in cooperation with school representatives.

A larger circle of all workers is beginning to realize that failure to fulfill the government’s promise to increase the share of the state budget for education will have fatal consequences

But that doesn’t calm the atmosphere. “For many years, the ministry registered tariffs that had an internal margin, and it didn’t bother him at all, but now suddenly he wants the universities to adjust it in half a year,” a source from the university unions described to Novinkam a Práva.

According to him, during the feverish calculations of the last few weeks, it became clear that the funds sent by the state for the teaching itself are weaker than expected. “At one of the medical faculties, they calculated that if they were to finance teachers’ salaries only from what the state sends for educational activities, then the professor has a salary of forty thousand,” he said.

Some faculties have easier access to grants, or people from abroad who pay school fees study with them. For example, medicine costs 460,000 a year, studies at the Hussite Theological Faculty 12,000. And this also has a significant impact on salaries.

Ministry of Education and Culture: There are tens of thousands of crowns in the earnings of academics at different universities

Science and schools

The head of the faculty of philosophy, Martin Hříbek, is also worried about layoffs. “If salaries are increased in the most underfunded faculties and the university as a whole does not have sufficient resources to increase them, there will be pressure to reduce the number of jobs,” he said.

“Inflation has reduced the real value of tariff wages by more than a quarter over the past two years. That is why an increasingly large number of people are beginning to realize that the government’s unfulfilled promise to increase the share of the state budget for education to the level of the average of OECD countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) will have fatal consequences not only for humanities faculties,” added Hříbek.

At the same time, the fields of humanities and social sciences now educate more students than others in proportion to the number of teachers.

And, for example, at medical schools, where the ratio is lower, salaries will probably start to rise, because as they increase for doctors, teaching and research cease to be attractive.

We will not understand each other without the humanities. Essay by Václav Bělohradský

SALON