FREE TRADE UNION FEDERATION IN EDUCATION - FSLI
ROMANIA

 

I. FACTS & FIGURES - A SHORT HISTORY OF FSLI

1990    year of establishment;
1991    the first public demonstration in education is held, resulting in a 70% wage increase;
1993    FSLI became the founding member of Education International;
1996    FSLI became a member of CSDR;
1998    the biggest general strike of the Romanian education system (5 weeks);
2004    the law initiative for directing 6% of GDP to education has been forwarded to the         Romanian Parliament.

II. OBJECTIVES

• serves the interests of the education employees in relation to the Ministry of Education, the Romanian Government and public authorities;
• protects and promotes our members’ professional, economic, social and cultural rights;
• aims to improve working and living conditions of its members;
• provides legal assistance to affiliated unions;
• is involved in drawing law innitiatives for education generally, and education employees in particular;
• offers training for teachers as part of the EU funded projects;
• promotes education improvement and modernization.

III. PARTENERSHIPS

• at the national level: CSDR, Economic and Social Council, the Social Dialogue Commitees of the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labour and Ministry of Finance;
• internationally: ETUCE, ETUI, Education International;
• partnerships with unions from: Spain, Portugal, France, Moldova, Israel, Hungary, Poland etc.

IV. Operational structure

• Main objectives and activities:

The main objective of FSLI is to defend the professional and educational interests and working rights of teachers and other professional categories who are employed in education system. In the same time FSLI act to defense an quality, participative, democratic and inclusive education system like dynamic instrument for a more equal and non-discriminatory society.
FSLI acts in the following areas:

• Improving social conditions, work conditions and remuneration for teachers;
• Developing the TU organizations affiliated in the context of accelerating the decentralization process by continuing the process of professionalization of union activity;
• Sustaining the authorities and other organizations to achieve a coherent and sustainable reform of preprimary, primary and secondary education in order to obtain Romanian schools compatible with European standards and structures;
• Develop partnerships with trade unions, non-governmental, administrative and international organization in order to develop capacity of TU to promote social dialogue and more rights for their affiliate members;
• Extending the cooperation at European and international level.

In addition to trade union activity, which involves education and participation in drafting the legislation in the field of education, contributions to structure and content of the reform or development of standards, statutes and strategy FSLI is focused on LLL and continuing education of affiliated teachers. Training activities are essential elements in our vision to ensure key skills, knowledge and skills needed to develop trained human resouces and a competitive education system.

• Administrative structure of our organization – (sectors, branches, territorial structures):

FSLI is a nationally representative trade union organization in education, founded in 1990, comprising 197,000 affiliated members, organized unions at county level, with an infrastructure consisting of human resouces, material and financial resouces expanded nationwide.
FSLI organize affiliate members from pre-primary, primary, secondary and vocational education. The follw categories of members: teachers, non-teaching staff and auxiliary teaching staff are organize in 59 territorial organizations national wide.
Each territorial organization has a structure including President, vice-presidents and school leaders. One representative of each territorial organization is member in Leaders' College.
Governing bodies of the Federation of Trade Unions of Education are:

• The National Conference
• The National Council
• The Leaders' College
• The Operative Bureau
• President of F.S.L.I.

The National Conference is the top management body which is held every four years or whenever it is needed and has the following authorities: approve or amend the Statute or the members of the Operative Burea; set-up  strategies, goals and directions of the FSLI and analyzes the activities of the governing bodies.

The National Council is the governing body between two National Conferences and the members (representantives in Leaders' College and other delegates) shall meet in annual or whenever needed.

The Leaders' College provide leadership of the FSLI between the National Council meetings and consists of members of the Operative Bureau and leadres of all affiliated unions. The Leaders' College decide on set of labor conflicts and ways of solving them, also solve problems generally, conduct of labor conflicts; adopt, amend and complete claims; etc.

The Operative Bureau ensure effective leadership of theFSLI, is responsible for ensuring the development of budget execution, TU activities and is coordinated by the President.

The President of FSLI has the attributes (in addition to the Task Force Bureau) approval of financial documents, management FSLI's delegations at negotiations taking place at the Ministry of Education, Government, Parliament or in dialogue with other unions or other structure, carrying out any other duties established by the Operative Bureau and representation of FSLI in all relationships with third parties.

FSLI is founding member of IE (since 1993), also member in ETUCE and other organizations and bodies in education domain.

• Memberships:

FSLI organize affiliate members from pre-primary, primary, secondary and vocational education. The follw categories of members: teachers, non-teaching staff and auxiliary teaching staff are organize in 59 territorial organizations national wide.

Each territorial organization has a structure including President, vice-presidents and school leaders. In Romania there are 7,000 pre-university schools in public education. FSLI has union's organizations 4,400 schools, that means 63% of the Romanian education system employees are members of FSLI.

• Experience of projects:

In the context of sustainable development, globalization, and an education system who integrate research and innovation, FSLI support through their own projects the aim to improve quality and efficiency of education and training, and facilitate equal access to education and vocational training system and opening to the European space.

On these lines FSLI have been developed in last years, programs focuseed on training on different themes like management of the education, communication and negotiation techniques, project management, leadership.

The main project run by FSLI at this moment is: Project POSDRU/57/1.3/S/33057 "Development of primary and secondary education sistemthrough educational partnership" (total budget of this project is 2.201.589,91 EUR).

The project is co-financed by FSLI (220.200,00 Euro) and Social European Found through The Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013 (SOP HRD) on the Priority Axis 1 "Education and training in support for growth and development of a knowledge based society". The project is running till 2012.

Main activites of the project:

• to develop a National Training Centre with 8 regional training centres nationalwide;
• to specialized 30 trainers in adults traiming methodes and management of quality in education system;
• to train 800 teaches in management of quality in education system;
• set up a e-learning platform in order to develop and run LLL programmes for affiliate members.

FSLI is also partner in follw projects:

• Project POSDRU/55/1.1/S/37932: "Linking the offer of vocational and technical education with labor market requirements".

The project is co-financed by Social European Found through The Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013 (SOP HRD) on the Priority Axis 1 - 1 "Education and training in support for growth and development of a knowledge based society". The applicant is National Center for Technical and Vocational Education and the other partners are: Instituto Universitario de Lisboa (Portugal) and National Research Institute for Labor and Social Protection (Romania).

The main objective of this project is increasing the relevance of initial vocational training offer by vocational and technical education (VET) in relation to labor market needs and requirements of economic and social development from the perspective of knowledge-based society by improving strategic planning documents at the county level and local VET. The project start in 2010 and the budget for FSLI is aprox. 2.000.000 Euro.

2.   Project POS DRU/97/6.3/S/63072: "Promoting gender equal opportunities through innovative activities in social partners' organizations, with a focus on education institutions"

The main objective of the project is to promote the gender equal opportunities concept through follow activities:

• Assessing the situation of gender equal opportunities at European and national level and prepare a summary document;
• Informing and raising awareness on gender equality among social partners and education institutions by creating a multi-regional platform for information and partnership with 30 information points in rural and urban schools;
• Facilitate teachers' access to the European transfer of best practices regarding gender equality by organizing two study visits in two EU countries for 30 participants and a seminar to exchange best practices.

The project was started in January 2011 by one of the FSLI affiliate organization (Teachers Union from Neamt Region is the applicant) and the partners are, beside FSLI, organizations from Spain and Italy. The total budget of the project is approx. 2.800.000 Euro; the budget allocate for FSLI is 584.000 Euro for 3 years.

Because the FSLI is a member of various European and international organizations have been completed in partnership programs that:

• "Pilot project on information, awareness and training to schools and community for integration of children and young people with special needs", financed by the EU Phare Access 2002 (budget 125,000 euro). The project aimed was training teachers in order to develop the necessary skills to work with children with disabilities in classroom.
• Project "Creation of employment opportunities for youth and children, vulnerable to trafficking", funded International Labour Organization - International Programme for the Prevention of Exploitation of Child Labor (budget: 75,000 USD). FSLI has developed a curriculum and has implemented a training of trainers course and has completed teacher training course on the prevention of school dropout.
• During 2001 - 2011 FSLI was involved as partner in "Global Campaign for Education", and also was involved as a partner in the international campaign "All children need a teacher!" focused on the need to guarantee a quality education for all children by providing the necessary number of qualified and motivated teachers.

Also FSLI deloped a structure capable to design, deliver and provide mangement and assistance in implementation of small grants projects for affiliated members. Few examples in this respect:

Project LLP-LdV/VETPRO/2011/RO/047 - "Improving the capacity of teachers and transfer of innovative methods and practices concerning school and classroom management in order to facilitate an effective transition of students from school to professional life" - implemented by Teachers TU from Sector 1 Bucharest in partnership with Centro Social por Trabajadores, Spain, financed by EU Commission - Education and Culture DG, the Lifelong Learning Programme (Budget: 100.560 Euro)

Project LLP-LdV/VETPRO/2011/RO/093 - "Developing the skills of professionals from education system to implement quality assurance systems in vocational education and technical transfer of innovative practices" implemented by FSLI - Youth Department in partnership with Centro Social por Trabajadores, Spain and CIVITA, Italy,  financed by EU Commission - Education and Culture DG, the Lifelong Learning Programme (Budget: 76.890 Euro)

Project  LLP-LdV/VETPRO/2010/RO/176 - "Training programme to improuve the capacity of teches in secondary education system to develop projects financed by EU founds" implemented by Teaches TU (SIIPS 4) from Bucharest in patnership with CIFOTIE Portugal and ALBAFOR Italy, financed by EU Commission - Education and Culture DG, the Lifelong Learning Programme (Budget: 75.000 Euros)

Project LLP-LDV/VETPRO/2010/RO/088 - "Training program for teachers to acquire skills in leadership and management of projects financed by EU" implemented by Teaches TU "Gh. Asachi" from Iasi in partnership with ALBAFOR SpA-Instituto Superiore Formazione Orientamento e Ricerca, Italy, financed by EU Commission - Education and Culture DG, the Lifelong Learning Programme (Budget: 80.000 Euros)