Epress.am News from Armenia
Along with the baseless and sudden cut in the salaries of State Engineering University of Armenia (SEUA, or Polytechnic) lecturers, one can expect reforms at the university, assured physics lecturer Azat Mirzoyan, speaking to Epress.am. Mirzoyan, who has been teaching at the university for 40 years, is one of the lecturers dissatisfied with university rector Ara Avetisyan, asking for his resignation. The teaching staff is displeased both with the reduced salaries and the dismissal of lecturers.
According to Avetisyan, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan himself said that no employer has the right to reduce employees' salaries; meanwhile, the rector did so without any basis.
"There are 17 lecturers in our department; they're saying that in May, 6–7 lecturers must be let go. Imagine, in the words of our department chair, 'A battle of gladiators will begin.' Is this the approach of the head of an institution? Lecturers and professors are valuable — you cannot take such an approach toward them," said Mirzoyan.
Avetisyan's approach, he added, is not "innovation" but leading to the death of an 80-year-old institution.
Ashot Khachatryan, head of the physics department, emphasized that the reconciliation commission created by Avetisyan to address their discontent is just another "hot air balloon": "In this command [of his], he only needs the name [of such a commission], most likely to resolve problems he faces outside the university; meanwhile, no steps have been taken in terms of rectifying the situation with the collective."
"In a four-hour meeting on Oct. 10, about 400 people from our collective had gathered, but our rector, apart from the fact that he left in a uncertain state and made no proposals, left the room before the meeting was over," said Khachatryan.
The department chair stressed that Avetisyan consistently lies and spreads misinformation.
In particular, according to Khachatryan, Avetisyan, dismissing 34 lecturers from their jobs, officially announced that he had dismissed only 4 people.
The Epress.am correspondent spoke with SEUA rector Ara Avetisyan, who said that he simply introduced a fair system of distributing jobs, about which staff don't have a complete understanding. As a result of the discontent, Avetisyan created the commission, which will deal with the matter of the salaries.
"To tell the truth, it's because of the [university’s] poor social condition and in that sense, it's acceptable. The day after holding the trade union meeting I made a decision to create a working group to study the state of the budget, proposing to the teaching staff such a way of establishing and distributing the budget to be able to recover those differences, so that no employee gets a penny less whatsoever," said Avetisyan.
The rector insists that there have been no salary cuts at the university.
According to him, the working group was to get together for the first time today; meanwhile, the other, protesting party has announced that it's refusing to participate.
"The working group has been assigned to present a proposal by Nov. 1 and the decision we adopt will be applied from Sept. 1 — a recalculation of the salaries, so that people, according to differentiations, won't get less, compared to last year," concluded Avetisyan.