A hearing on the Teachers’ Union-Finance Ministry dispute is scheduled for Wednesday at the Labor Court in Tel Aviv, with the routine of kindergarten and elementary school schedules hanging in the balance.
Some tens of thousands of teachers have been on a “sick day” strike since the start of the week. So, though negotiations were breached with the Finance Ministry on pay compensations, the damage has already been done, so to speak: Teachers aren’t satisfied, and parents are having to manage childcare and their own jobs.
The decision to strike came after the Finance Ministry imposed budget cuts on teachers’ salaries due to what it said were war expenses, as part of a larger financial framework.
A 3.3% cut
The cut was 3.3% of their salaries. The teachers argued that the compensations for the pay cuts were not appropriate or adequate, unlike Histadrut labor federation workers, who received several more vacation days to make up for the cuts.
What the sides agreed to on Sunday was to lessen the pay cuts by half and to add vacation days to the teachers’ calendars as compensation, but many teachers had already called in a sick day, and the damage to morale was too far gone to retrieve, especially in a field that is notoriously overworked and underpaid.
