Teaching unions to strike Monday over wage agreement impasse
Special ed schools, institutions near Gaza border to remain open; unions blast treasury for failure of talks.
By Or KashtiIsrael's teaching unions are planning a strike Monday, which will close all schools in the northern and southern parts of the country, in protest at the failure to sign a collective wage agreement.
The strike will include kindergartens, elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. The strike will not affect schools in the Gaza vicinity and special education institutions.
In the south, schools in Be'er Sheva, Eilat, Dimona, Yeruham, Kiryat Gat, Ashkelon and Ashdod will be closed, and in the north, the action will affect Tiberias, Kiryat Shmona, Nahariya, Acre, Karmiel, Safed, Afula and Upper Nazareth.
During recent weeks, the teaching unions have conducted partial strikes across the country as a part of the labor dispute declared last month.
According to the unions, the negotiations with the Finance Ministry have not yielded any results.
Teachers' trade union leader Yossi Wasserman told Haaretz two weeks ago that teachers have been leading Israel in a public struggle to implement widely acceptable reforms in the education system.
"During this period, we operated with societal-public responsibility and we avoided taking steps that could hurt teachers and students," he said. "But the government of Israel and the treasury continue to harm the education system, children, the public and teachers."
Ran Erez, who heads the Association of Secondary School Teachers, added: "The time has come for the treasury to come to its senses and understand that the existing situation in the education system cannot continue."
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"Start working full-time like everyone else 8:00-17:00 with 12 days paid holiday a year and all the parents will fight for your salaries!!" Typical complaint of a person who has no knowledge of a teachers' work. When my wife was a secondary school teacher, after coming home she would spend hours preparing lessons, grading notebooksm papers and tests, writing report cards, Moreover, all staff meetings, which were held almost weekly, were after school hours. In other words, about half her work was done AFTER class time. This is typical of Israeli teachers, whom I have been training for years. Go get an education.
As a parent AND a teacher, I'd be fine with that if it meant no at home grading of work,no parents conferences at night, no preparing lectures and work at home, no more 42 kids in a class in a 45 minute hour and a few dozen other items. When was the last time you worked every night after your "official" hours were over? And in which country do the kids have a "twelve vacation days" a year schedule? Or should we work when the kids aren't there? And speaking of kids, I'll NEED a much higher salary to pay someone to watch my little one while I'm working those extra hours...as will most of the teaching force as it is mostly made up of women, many with young families...which is why they've suffered with this abuse so long...
Dear Teachers, Start working full-time like everyone else 8:00-17:00 with 12 days paid holiday a year and all the parents will fight for your salaries!!
Literally. From kindergarten thru university, education budgets have been slashed over the past several years. As a result, the level of teaching and results have plummeted; less and young people go into education (and the level of those that do is lower); university academics leave the country for greener pastures. Does our government have a secret plan to turn Israel into a Third World country? If it does, it's succeeding.