Translated material
Stopping the educational process
Volgograd teachers want to get their salaries
The protest of fifty-five teachers of secondary school No. 111 continues for the third day in Volgograd, demanding that the city authorities pay off wage arrears and compensation for late payment of vacation benefits. Yesterday, representatives of the school's trade union committee conveyed their ultimatum to the city fathers. At a meeting of the trade union committee, teachers decided to go on strike if the administration does not find funds to satisfy their demands within three days, but for now the action is officially called “temporary suspension of the educational process.”On the eve of these events, the parents of eight hundred students at the school in the Sovetsky district of Volgograd received papers in which the teachers notified them that their children’s education would be terminated until the financial issue was resolved. As soon as the city and regional authorities find funds to pay off their debts (including payments of compensation for teaching aids), teachers are again ready to return to classrooms, even if they are unheated. But the first condition they raise is the payment of wages. The regional committee of trade unions of education workers believes that local authorities owe Volgograd teachers about 50 million rubles. and plus another 36 million rubles. The regional authorities owe it to the teachers of the remaining regional centers of the subject of the Federation.
The most interesting thing is that such a situation on the eve of the celebration in Volgograd of the 60th anniversary of the victory of the Battle of Stalingrad was quite predictable. The mayor of Volgograd, Yuri Chekhov, at the end of last year, when the regional Duma approved the main financial document of the region, did not stop complaining about the meager budget allocations. And at one of the planning meetings in the Volgograd administration, he even said that public sector workers may not receive salaries in January. So the current situation, strange as it may sound, may even play into the hands of the city administration in its struggle for additional subsidies from the regional budget.