Respecting the opinion of the Protector of Citizens, the Ministry of Education and the representative education unions agreed on changes to the Special Collective Agreement for employees in primary and secondary schools and student dormitories, according to which the number of children and financial status are no longer among the main, but have become additional criteria for determining the employees whose work has ceased to be necessary.
Acting on his own initiative, the Protector of Citizens sent an opinion to the Ministry of Education that in the Special Collective Agreement for employees in primary and secondary schools and student dormitories, the criteria should be changed for determining employees whose work has ceased to be necessary, full-time or part-time, which are prescribed in Article 34, paragraph 1, item 5 and item 7.
The Protector of Citizens pointed out that it is necessary to change the criterion – financial status of the employee and the criterion – number of children of pre-school age, that is, children in regular education up to the age of 26, by applying them only as additional, and not as the main criteria.
The Ministry of Education adopted the opinion of the Protector of Citizens by negotiating with representative trade unions, with whom the Government of the Republic of Serbia then concluded a Special Collective Agreement on Amendments to the Special Collective Agreement for employees in primary and secondary schools and student dormitories on 21 October 2022, which stipulates that the criteria of the employee's financial status and the number of children are applied as additional criteria, i.e. only in cases where several employees have the same number of points.
With the same amendments to the Special Collective Agreement, another opinion of the Protector of Citizens was accepted, following an investigation launched on the complaint of the Education Union of Serbia, Board of Jablanica District, stating that schools improperly and illegally apply Articles 34-36 of the Special Collective Agreement, which leads to the violation and endangerment of the rights of employees, as well as the regularity of the implementation of the scoring procedure for employees whose work has ceased to be necessary.
The opinion of the Protector of Citizens that it is necessary to regulate the composition and number of members of the commission that makes a proposal to the director of an educational institution for an employee whose work has ceased to be necessary, was respected by amending the Special Collective Agreement so that it stipulates that the commission has at least three members, that the number of members is always odd, and that the secretary of the institution is a mandatory member.