Last update - 00:00 27/12/2007
Striking professors slam university heads for going to court
By Tamara Traubmann and Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondents
Striking senior university faculty said the decision by the university presidents to seek an injunction from the Labor Court to end their 10-week strike was unprecedented in academia. Some of the lecturers passed resolutions condemning the move; the Technion in Haifa began the process to have its president removed.
By Wednesday night the university heads united front had begun to crack. Tel Aviv University President Zvi Galil said he opposed the issuing of an injunction by the court and asked that the name of Tel Aviv University be removed from the request.
Speaking to 500 members of the senior faculty, his statements were received with cheers. However an official on the Council of University Presidents later said Galil would appear together with the other university heads at the Labor Court on Sunday. Professor Moshe Kaveh, the council's chairman, said Wednesday they did not want the injunctions to be invoked immediately.
"We first of all want to get back to intensive negotiations and report to the court. We will seek the injunctions only as a last resort. The approach to the court is not against the faculty but mainly to bring the Finance Ministry to the table, and not to allow the semester to be lost."
Labor Court President Judge Steve Adler has given the faculty until Sunday morning to respond to the presidents demand. Adler has also called the attorneys for the university heads, the lecturers and the treasury to a conference to take place Thursday.
The request to the Labor Court states that the strike has directly harmed some 100,000 students, and has caused "cumulative damage to the public higher education system" in which it may be perceived that "the chance to obtain a degree is complicated and subject to the threat of strikes."
The lecturers are seeking a 30-percent pay increase, while the treasury is willing to raise their salaries by 20 percent, some of which would be chalked up to past erosion of their pay, and some to future erosion.
"We are very disappointed in the appeal to the court," said Professor Ben-Zion Munitz, chairman of Tel Aviv University's senior faculty union. "They have changed the relationship in academia from cooperation to plaintiff and defendant."
The Technion faculty decided Wednesday to denounce their president and the heads of the other universities, and a number of lecturers began proceedings to dismiss Technion President Professor Yitzhak Apeloig, for being part of the request to the Labor Court. To that end, they are seeking the signatures of 100 members of the university senate, half that body, to pass a vote of no-confidence in the president. By Wednesday, they had collected about half the required signatures.
Lecturers at the Hebrew University made a similar decision on Tuesday with regard to President Menachem Magidor. However, this is purely a declarative step as only the university's executive committee can dismiss the president. The Hebrew University's junior faculty struck for one day Wednesday in sympathy with senior lecturers, and set up a protest tent opposite the prime minister's residence.
Meanwhile, in Be'er Sheva, some 300 students blocked main traffic arteries following a meeting between students and lecturers to try to unite their two fights into one for overall education in Israel.
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