Last update - 00:00 18/01/2008
Lecturers end longest higher education strike in Israel's history
By Tamara Traubmann, Haaretz Correspondent
Striking university faculty Friday officially signed an agreement with treasury officials, bringing the months' long strike over senior lecturers' wages to an end.
The agreement was drafted by Histadrut labor federation chair Ofer Eini, who said he was pleased that the professors and treasury were "responsible enough to reach an agreement that would salvage the academic year."
"I don't want to even think about the potential damage that could have been caused had the academic year been canceled," Eini said. The parties, which included Eini, faculty representatives, Education Minister Yuli Tamir, Treasury wages director Eli Cohen, budget direction Ram Balinkov, and university presidents, needed a marathon 18-hour round of talks to hammer out a deal. Students are expected to resume their studies on campuses beginning Sunday.
The compromise deal is substantially lower than the lecturers' original demands, and stands on a 16.8 percent compensation for salary erosion over the past ten years.
The deal brings to an end the universities' 90-day strike - the longest higher education strike in Israel's history.
"This is an excellent wage agreement, the best that has been reached in the last decade," said Zvi Hacohen, the head of the coordinating body for senior faculty organizations. "The deal provides a solution to the needs of the faculty and to the state of Israel."
Hacohen offered praise for Eini, without whose intervention "we would not have succeeded in getting the wagon out of the mud." As for the students, Hacohen extended an apology "for being forced to inconvenience them."
"We are talking about an important, responsible agreement which prevents the cancellation of the academic year so that students will return to the universities on Sunday, all without harming other wage agreements that were reached in other sectors of the economy and all part of the effort to remain within the budgetary framework," Finance Minister Roni Bar-On said.
The treasury was unable to convince the lecturers to accept its demand for the agreement to include clauses dealing with work conditions, recommendations first raised in the Shochat Committee report. Nonetheless, the deal represents "a new path ... that needs to be the start of the road to reform in higher education," Bar-On said.
"The agreement, after a decade during which the faculty did not have a wage agreement, creates a true breakthrough in its pay, and I hope that it will contribute to attracting new faculty and prevent the continuing brain drain," Tamir said.
According to the terms of the deal, the lecturers will receive an accrued 24 percent in supplementary income through 2009, 18.7 percent of which will be distributed in three payments. The remaining bump in salary will be enforced according to revised tenure guidelines for senior lecturers which are to be negotiated beginning this month.
Both sides were unable to agree on a mechanism which would prevent future wage erosion, and thus the agreement is valid only through 2009. In earlier discussions, the parties were aiming for an agreement that would run through 2015, but to no avail.
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