Recruitment

Education Minister İsmet Yılmaz said it was normal that questions not relevant to evaluating the level of knowledge or competence of teachers are posted to them in their job interviews. 

The International Committee of experts suggests scheduled reductions, as well as flexible contracts, the so-called “zero hour contracts”, with an allowance from the State as an alternative solution instead of collective redundancies in case a business faces an economic difficulty. For the same reason further salary reductions are requested in the following cases:

The Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, on Friday upheld an appeal by members of the armed forces against reductions in their salaries carried out by the government in 2014.

The government at the time was forced to revoke a decision to cut armed forces workers' salaries after the same court deemed it violated the Constitution.

A revised circular on employees’ monthly salaries released revealed a discrepancy between staff in the state sector. Deputy Finance Minister George Chouliarakis was compelled to issue the new circular regarding the monthly wages of employees in the public sector, after the confusion caused by the previous one.

The Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV) has proposed slashes in the average public sector wages over a ‘reasonable time period’. SEV argues the excessive public sector is a burden on the private sector, suggesting spending cuts through lay-offs and salary reductions.

The Ministry for Public Administration is therefore preparing a plan to improve the pay system and reduce anomalies. Advantages should be seen in the consistent implementation of the reward structures and equal salaries for comparable roles.

The Serbian National Assembly on Monday adopted the Law on the Salary System of Employees in the Public Sector.

It concerns some 500,000 citizens employed by the state and provides for calculating salaries based on the same elements, the same base salary and a single correlation coefficients range matrix.

Bulgaria's government has proposed to cut by 40% the one-off compensation paid upon retirement to Interior Ministry staff employed in administrative job positions.

Bulgarian teachers are paid the lowest salaries among European countries.

This is shown by the latest annual report of Eurydice on Teachers' and School Heads' Salaries and Allowances conducted in 36 European countries during the 2014/2015 school year.

With an average wage of EUR 4970 per year, teachers in Bulgaria rank at the bottom.

About 55,000 EU civil servants will receive a pay rise of 2.4% this year that will translate into spending of some EUR 100 M from the bloc's budget, the state-run Bulgarian news agency BTA reported on Tuesday.