Teachers' unions have repeated their demands for an average salary of 648 leva for everyone working in the educational system, including non-pedagogical staff.
The strike was to continue on October 22, while Parliament discussed the vote of no-confidence, mediapool.bg said.
One week before the local elections of October 28, Prime Minister and leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) Sergei Stanishev showed no sign of giving in. A few days before, an agreement had been reached with the unions for 650 leva teachers' salaries as of July 1 2008. Only a few hours later the unions denied having agreed to it and sent to their local sections a proposal under which salaries for teachers would reach 720 leva and that for non-pedagogical staff 420 leva. Average salary for the sector would then be 650 leva.
If the unions would continue to behave in this way, Government might reconsider its offer and propose a reduction of salaries instead, Stanishev warned on October 20. He said some of the candidate mayors paid the teachers so they would not become the target of protests.
According to Stanishev there was no risk of the whole school year being canceled, as those who wanted nothing less than 100 per cent increase were in the minority, though they were the most active in protests, giving the impression they represented all teachers.
Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) leader Ahmed Dogan said on October 21 that "provocateurs in the strike have set themselves the goal to provoke protests and have the protests go outside the unions' framework."
"We have information that someone is stimulating a politicising of the actions," Dogan said.
"It is time this question is answered concretely within the context of the demands and State's possibilities," he added.
Zhivka Zhelyazkova of the national strike committee said "teachers do want reforms. They want to go to their schools and teach the children. But these reforms cannot take place in a matter of a few days and be decided in a strike agreement, with no reforms for the next 15 or more years."
Valentin Nikiforov of KNSB union said that government was forgetting that the school year was midway and it was not possible to have layoffs right now.
Spokesperson for the strike committee of protesting teachers, Nikolai Nikolov told Bulgarian National Radio, "during the strike we cannot change our demands. The strike demands have been clear from the beginning for the entire sector."
Zhelyazkova said that 80 per cent of the teachers had mandated the unions to hold negotiations in their name for a gradual increase of the salaries with 20 per cent as of October 1 2007, January 1 2008 and July 1 2008, reaching an average salary for the sector of 650 leva. There was no support for Stanishev's proposal for 650 leva salary for teachers, she said.
The association for parents' activity announced that if the strikes would continue on October 22, it would file complaints at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg and the International Court of Justice in The Hague against the leaders of the Unions for violation of the children's rights to education.
On October 21, the unions struck back at the leader of the association, Vyara Lazarova, accusing her of having received 1 300 leva for three educational seminars for class teachers, paid for out of the budget of two schools. The unions questioned her right to speak up against the morality of private classes because of this.
The committee Samosaznanie (self-awareness) has threatened that it too would file complaints in The Hague and Strasbourg if the strike would continue after October 24. In this case the defendants would be Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, Education Minister Daniel Vulchev and Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski.
