European Trade Union Committee for Education

On 5 October 2017, at the occasion of World Teachers’ Day 2017, the Education and Science Trade Union of Slovenia (ESTUS), ETUCE’s member organisation in Slovenia, is organising an extended session of its main board. This initiative aims at raising awareness on the alarming situation teachers and other education personnel are facing, with regards to deteriorating working conditions.

Paradoxically, while the education system in Slovenia is recognised as one of the best in the world (see TIMSS and PISA assessments for further data), the education sector is strikingly underfunded. Imposed austerity reduced the share of public funding of education to a 7.5% of total public expenditure, thus increasing the gap with other OECD countries, allocating on average 11.2% of their budget on education. It is no surprise thus that the salaries of Slovenian education workers continue to lag behind in comparison to those of colleagues from other OECD countries.  Moreover, this situation results in an imbalance between decreasing public education funding and increasing responsibilities and workload for education personnel, jeopardizing in turn the ability of teachers and other education workers to practice their professions in decent conditions, and the attractiveness of the profession for younger generation.

As the extended session of the ESTUS’s main board proceeds, ETUCE wishes to express its solidarity with ESTUS members in their revindications, in line with its advocacy work at European level for the raise of the teaching profession’s status and attractiveness, through a crucial raise of education workers’ wages. These demands are in line with the European-wide and ETUCE-backed Pay Rise Campaign, in which the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) appeals for the general increase of wages for all European workers.

To read ETUCE’s solidarity letter to ESTUS, please click here.