Teachers - get off your high horse

The state's request yesterday that the National Labor Court pull the stalled negotiations with the Secondary School Teachers Association (SSTA) out of the mud testifies to the fact that the teachers are not interested in ending the strike in high schools and some junior high schools, which has been dragging on for 43 days.

At the end of a round of meetings that produced no results, and after failed mediation attempts by the head of the Union of Local Authorities, Adi Eldar, and the chairman of the Histadrut labor federation, Ofer Eini, it is now possible to state in no uncertain terms that the teachers union does not intend to find a compromise, and also will torpedo the deal signed with the National Teachers Union, even though that union represents a large proportion of the employees in the education system.

The state agreed to two important demands by the teachers: First, teachers in both primary and secondary education will receive an 8.5 percent raise, and in return will work longer hours. Second, the state promised the Labor Court that it would add 20,000 teaching hours in 2008, and would "present a multi-year plan to add [teaching] hours to the education system."

The state accepted the teachers' third demand, to reduce the number of students in classes, saying that it would allocate a multi-year budget for this.

But it seems that the SSTA is ignoring its achievements and insisting on extracting more and more based on its public support. The latest blowup in the negotiations came from differences in opinion on the issue of the raises, which will be given as an advance on the future reforms in secondary education. If the sides do not agree to such reforms, the teachers are asking to continue to receive the higher wages, since they claim they are giving more hours. The Finance Ministry objects to this but has already promised that if an agreement is not reached, the additional budget intended for the raises will still remain with the Education Ministry and will be transfered to other purposes, such as reducing the number of students in a class or reinstating teaching hours.

According to conservative estimates, this is worth hundreds of millions of shekels. The head of the SSTA, Ran Erez, consistently claims that he does not believe the government's promises, and therefore will not settle for assurances to reduce the number of pupils per class or for reinstating teaching hours. Instead he is demanding detailed plans. This is an impossible demand.

There is no doubt that the teachers need to be heard, but there is a government in Jerusalem and it has the right and duty to set priorities in allocating resources. The SSTA has succeeded in putting class size reductions and additional teaching hours on the public agenda. This is a significant achievement and it must be safeguarded, but now the union must leave it to the state to decide how to implement its commitments in these two areas.

The state committed itself to a salary increase of more than 30 percent and efforts to reduce classroom overcrowding and add teaching hours. Given these conditions, it is hard even for those who supported the strike - for education, as Erez and supporters call it - to justify its continuation, and to allow the disruption of studies and day-to-day routine for 550,000 students.