“The total amount of funds for salary increases next year will be seven percent higher for teachers and five percent for the rest of the civil servants,” said the spokeswoman of the department, Gabriela Krušinová.
According to her, this increase will be in the draft state budget for next year, which will be approved by the government on Wednesday. “After that, of course, it will be broken down into individual chapters,” she added.
What percentage of the increase will go to the tariff or above-tariff salary components in individual chapters will still be discussed. “He can decide on it after the state budget is approved,” the spokeswoman pointed out.
How exactly the funds will be distributed may become clear in a few weeks. In any case, the intention of Labor Minister Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL), who announced the week before last that he would like to add more to employees with lower incomes and less to those with higher incomes, will probably have to change. On Friday, the management of his department did not answer the question whether he had already come up with this proposal.
“It is already clear that there will be a basic salary increase of five percent in all departments. For teachers, it will be seven percent, which results from legal obligations,” stated Minister of Education Mikuláš Bek (STAN) on Thursday.
The Minister of the Interior Vít Rakušan (STAN) confirmed earlier that the volume of salary funds will also increase by five percent for policemen and firefighters from January.
According to Středula, the increase in the volume of finance for salaries in the public sector by the previously promised eight percent would mean an increase of more than 24 billion crowns in absolute terms. In the end, however, it will probably be a lower amount.
The unions originally demanded a ten percent increase in collective wages, but the possibility of negotiation was then cut short by floods.
Efforts to obtain a salary increase for civil servants as of September have already failed. The government defended itself by saying that there is no money in the budget reserve, and when it offered the trade unions to either take an increase of three or five percent for selected groups of workers, or leave it alone, the agreement fell under the table.
Středula misunderstood, says Stanjur’s spokesperson
The ministers then promised five percent on top from the New Year, but Stanjura was supposed to promise more at the tripartite meeting on September 4, which he did not deny.
But now Stanjur’s spokeswoman Michaela Lagronová categorically denies that the minister’s promise to increase the amount of money for salaries by eight percent would fall through.
“Minister Stanjura didn’t say anything like that to Josef Středul, he didn’t promise, if you like. Mr. Středula apparently must have misunderstood it,” she wrote to Novinka on Friday evening.
“Already at the end of August, we officially announced in a press release on the draft state budget for 2025 that the amount of money for teachers’ salaries will be proposed to be seven percent higher from January 2025, and five percent higher for other state employees. On September 5, we reconfirmed this information in another statement, regardless of the many public statements of the Minister of Finance since August 31,” Lagronova added, adding that nothing has changed in the Minister’s position from the end of August since then.
According to Středula, this is not the case. “He (Stanjura) said seven, seven and a half. Then he said that it is actually eight percent,” said the head of the trade union on Friday about the events at the September tripartite meeting, where he discussed salaries with ministers and company representatives.
In the evening after the tripartite meeting, Czech Television reported that Stanjura had confirmed that the budget from January envisages an increase in the volume of funds for salaries in the public sector by over seven percent.
Středula hopes that the salary agreement will be finalized before the government approves the draft state budget on Wednesday. “I expect that Prime Minister Fiala will contact us as soon as possible so that we can sit down,” he told Novinkám.
“Especially in light of the recent flood events, it is clear that state employees are doing a huge amount of work and it is right to appreciate it not only with ad hoc rewards, but also with a decent salary increase,” added Středula, adding that the unions insist that all increases go to tariffs.
He did not want to anticipate the union’s reaction in the event that the increase would be lower. Part of the trade unions remains on strike alert.
Due to the floods, the government is counting on a new budget deficit of 240 billion crowns for next year, when it intends to deepen this year’s deficit by thirty billion to 282 billion.
