Municipal strike could hit elementary schools, special education classes today

A strike by Jerusalem municipal employees intensified yesterday, spreading to 370 municipal kindergartens, and today, disruptions are possible at special education facilities and elementary schools. The strike will enter its third day today, and no end appears to be in sight.

Yesterday, the Teachers Union decided not to open nursery schools and kindergartens in the absence of teachers' aides, who are municipal employees, even though the municipality had recruited parents to fill in for the aides.

"The kindergartens cannot be run with volunteers," said the union's Jerusalem chairman, Motti Samet. "It endangers lives."

The Teachers Union also ordered school principals to close their schools if sanitary conditions deteriorate. This directive puts 15 city schools at risk of closing, as their janitorial services are provided by municipal employees rather than by outside contractors. However, the municipality said it would try to ensure that these schools are cleaned.

"It's sad, because you prepare a child to go to nursery school and speak to him and there is a lot of worry about how he will accept it, and all of a sudden it stops," said Tamir Assis, the father of a 3-year-old who just began nursery school. "Today he asked me what we're doing tomorrow. It is also very difficult financially," he added.

Jerusalem residents have also begun to feel the strike's effects on sanitation: The city's streets, especially in the center of town, are littered with garbage that has overflowed from trash receptacles onto the sidewalks.

There was little contact yesterday between the municipal workers' union and the city's mayor, Nir Barkat. The union called the strike to demand that the city halt investigations of employees by private investigators whom the municipality hired for this purpose. The union also wants the city to reduce the number of workers that it employs indirectly, via nonprofit organizations and municipal subsidiaries, rather than directly.

Barkat, who intensified his rhetoric against the union yesterday, charged that union leaders really called the strike in an effort to have two municipal employees who are suspected of corruption returned to their jobs. Zion Dahan, who chairs the municipal union, denied the charge and called the mayor "a neophyte who doesn't have much experience and is not trying to pursue serious negotiations."