AFTER THREE MONTHS WITHOUT PAY: Employees at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš receive only their July salaries!

Employees at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš received their July salaries this morning after not receiving a single dinar from the Ministry of Education for three months, Dušan Spasojević, a professor at the faculty, told FoNet.

“We received our July salaries this morning. We do not know on what legal basis they were paid, why our August and September salaries have not been paid, or when that will happen. Yesterday, the dean of our faculty received a notification from the Ministry of Education stating that the ‘conditions had been met’ for the payment of July salaries, without any explanation or clarification as to why those conditions had been ‘met’ for only one month and not all three,” Aleksić said.

He added that the July salaries had been paid in full and that all employees had received them.

The Ministry of Education previously stated that it had been unable to determine the amount of budget funding required for the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Serbian Studies until the actual number of employees transferring from one faculty to the other had been established and the employee transfer process completed.

According to the ministry’s statement, the Faculty of Serbian Studies had informed the Ministry of Education about employees transferring from the Faculty of Philosophy to the new institution, in accordance with the Serbian government’s decision to establish the Faculty of Serbian Studies at the University of Niš. This followed the structural change involving the separation of the departments of History, Serbian Studies, and Russian Language and Literature from the Faculty of Philosophy, thereby creating the conditions for the ministry to redistribute budget funds between the two institutions.

The Ministry of Education also stated that, under Article 19 of the Special Collective Agreement for Higher Education, the Faculty of Philosophy is required to pay employees at least once a month, no later than the end of the month for the preceding month. The ministry, meanwhile, provides only part of the budget funding for employee salaries, in accordance with the applicable regulations.

Employees at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš had not received their salaries since July 20, when the second installment of their June salaries was paid. Since then, they have also been without health insurance. The Ministry of Education has also stopped transferring funds to the faculty for material expenses and routine maintenance.

These actions by the ministry followed the faculty’s initiation of legal proceedings challenging the government’s decision under which, according to the faculty, three of its departments were taken away to serve as the basis for establishing the Faculty of Serbian Studies.

The faculty filed a criminal complaint against Education Minister Dejan Vuk Stanković, accusing him of exceeding his official authority. Despite the funding problems, classes, examinations, and work with students have continued without interruption throughout this period.

The Faculty of Philosophy was the first faculty at the University of Niš to support the students’ demands in early December 2024 and open its doors to their blockade.

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