The kindergartens in Banja Luka within the Center for Preschool Education and Care will continue their strike from Monday, October 20th and will operate according to the new act on the minimum work, and only four large facilities will accept nursery groups, i.e. children up to three years old, confirmed Slađana Mišić, president of the Trade Union Organization of the Center for Preschool Education and Care Banja Luka.
“We are reducing the work process and four kindergartens will be operating in the city tomorrow, “Plavi čuperak”, “Marija Mažar”, “Neven” and “Naša djeca”,” Mišić told RTRS.
It is all part of the “union mobile office”. Since June 2024, we have been writing to the founder, but we have not received any answers, says Mišić.
“Our first request was from June 2024, later the mayor’s associates called us to “help us a little”. We thought that someone would hear our cry, but now we have reached a general strike. We are kindergartens, that is a sensitive category. It is incomprehensible to us that someone could ignore our demands,” Mišić stated.
She said that it is very risky to invite them to negotiations through the media.
“At the end of September, we received an offer of a salary increase through a salary supplement, which we could not accept. We asked for a percentage increase in salary. Then they offered a 20 percent increase for all workers through incentives. We were thinking of adding another tranche and payment of holiday pay to that amount, which they refused,” Mišić stated.
She stated that they asked for a 20 percent salary increase for all employees.
– That was acceptable back then in June 2024, but after a year, some other things need to be defined – she emphasized.
One of the proposals was to increase the prices of kindergartens.
“Listening to our users every day, everyone says that they need to increase the price of our services. For 165 BAM, no one can afford anything anymore. The capacity of kindergartens in the city is also a problem. We now have 493 preschool institutions, of which 250 are public kindergartens. There is a real need to change many things at the public sector level,” said Mišić.
If this problem is not solved in the coming days, more radical measures will follow.
”Let the authorities take on the problem and solve it, and there will be no more work to be done. Tomorrow we work with the youngest, Tuesday is already in question. We are analyzing everything with the Trade Union Committee,” concluded Mišić.
