Nis Philosophy Faculty Staff Sue Over Unpaid Salaries

Staff at the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Nis have gone more than 50 days without pay, and they are now moving from warnings to legal action. Tatjana Paunovic, a professor at the faculty and president of the Nezavisnost union branch there, said employees will file a lawsuit with the Administrative Court against the Ministry of Education over the cut to the coefficient used to calculate salaries, and are also weighing a separate suit over the unpaid wages themselves. Staff have additionally agreed to file criminal complaints against officials at the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science for abuse of office.

The last payment into staff accounts was made on July 20. Neither the July nor the August salary has been paid since, and non-teaching staff, including those on the lowest pay grades, have also gone unpaid.

“Even though we haven’t been paid for 50 days or more, we won’t give up our position that we will not take part in any violation of the law or any unlawful action. What we have at our disposal are legal remedies,” Paunovic said.

According to her, the faculty is first pursuing the institutional route, while individual lawsuits by staff over unpaid wages are being held in reserve as a next step, should the institutional path fail to produce results.

An Unsigned Letter and the Minister’s Silence

The faculty, Paunovic said, received an unsigned letter from the Ministry of Education announcing that salaries would not be paid until staff met the ministry’s demands.

“We received an unsigned letter from the Ministry of Education stating: Until you fulfill what is being asked of you, you will not receive your salary. I don’t know how anyone could read that as anything but blackmail through a violation of the law,” Paunovic said.

When journalists asked the Ministry of Education for the document underlying the decision not to pay salaries, the minister personally signed a statement saying no such document exists. According to staff, no explanation has arrived either, despite multiple letters the faculty administration sent over the summer.

The Dispute Over Three Departments

Staff link the unpaid salaries to a dispute over splitting off the Department of History, the Department of Serbian Studies and the Department of Russian Language and Literature from the Philosophy Faculty, which under a government decision are to become part of a new Faculty of Serbian Studies. In March, the Ministry of Education amended the Philosophy Faculty’s operating license and struck eight study programs belonging to those departments from it. The faculty appealed, and the Administrative Court issued an interim injunction in the case against the ministry.

Srpske vesti has previously reported that Minister Balint made accreditation for the Philosophy Faculty conditional on handing over those same three departments. According to staff, the Ministry of Science threatened three days ago to withhold accreditation for the faculty’s research activity as well, over its refusal to cede the departments to the Faculty of Serbian Studies. This summer, the government first eliminated state-funded first-year undergraduate positions in those three departments, then did the same for master’s and doctoral studies, after which the Ministry of Education cut the coefficient used to calculate salaries, dropping the number of state-funded staff from 250 to 211.

Paunovic says the faculty administration bears no blame for the situation.

“We are still all holding together. We have no reason to be bitter toward our employer, because the faculty truly bears no blame,” Paunovic said, adding that staff are currently “hostages of an unlawful, unjust decision by the Ministry of Education, with no basis whatsoever, not to pay our salaries for July, and now for August as well.”

The Ministry of Education has yet to publicly explain why the Philosophy Faculty in Nis has been denied approved funds, while the lawsuit to the Administrative Court still awaits formal filing.