Union head: Teachers’ strike ‘suspended’; student, parent bodies denounce late notice
Ran Erez says high school teachers returning due to ‘responsibility to the state’ but won’t submit grades or permit off-campus activities; other unions: Don’t go to school Monday
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
The high school teachers’ strike, which began on the first day of the new school year on September 1, will be “suspended” and classes are to be in session Monday morning, Secondary Schools Teachers Association head Ran Erez said late Sunday night, drawing a furious reaction from unions representing students and parents who called for the announcement to be ignored.
“Out of responsibility to the state, teachers and students, and despite the irresponsibility of the Finance Ministry and the ‘blown-up’ negotiations, we announce the strike is suspended,” Erez said in a statement to union members, issued around 11:30 p.m. on Sunday.
Earlier in the day, reports emerged that a tentative compromise had been reached regarding the issue of individual contracts for teachers, one of the major sticking points in the negotiations. No further details were released Sunday night.
In his announcement, Erez noted that despite the return of the teachers, the negotiations with the government haven’t been concluded, that many sanctions put into place by the union still stand, and that the strike could resume if negotiations become deadlocked again.
“We continue with other struggles… The fight continues in the game to finish the negotiations,” he said.
The union still intends not to submit grades or to sponsor activities outside of school grounds such as field trips, except preparations for the annual trip to concentration camps in Poland, considered a rite of passage for Israel’s youth.
“Eligible teachers” whose salaries were harmed due to the weeklong strike will receive grants covering the missed days, and a fund has been set up to provide interest-free loans for teachers affected by the strike, the notice said.
Public pressure had been growing to end the strike, which delayed the beginning of the school year for some 514,000 high school students in 10-12th grades who had already been through a chaotic year of wartime during the last school year.
However, shortly after Erez made his announcement, national unions representing students and parents called for studies to remain on hold on Monday.
Denouncing Erez’s late-night announcement as a “mockery of Israel’s students,” the National Student and Youth Council and the National Parents’ Council called on students not to attend school and on parents not to send their kids, since “the students are not pawns in the hands of either side.”
In a statement, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who had been at loggerheads with Erez over salary and contract issues for weeks, said that it was good the strike was over, since it “was not justified in the first place, certainly not during a war. The negotiations can continue without harming the students, teachers and parents.”
“In war, you don’t harm teachers and students. Not with strikes and with sanctions,” Education Minister Yoav Kisch said on X.
The developments came after the strike had shown signs of losing its force.
Some Jewish religious schools, including yeshivas associated with the Bnei Akiva movement and some boarding schools, had already been open last week for activities without the striking teachers, and the Education Ministry, also last week, approved an initiative to open “alternative frameworks” to hold non-academic activities for high school students, which was to begin later this week.
In addition, the Haifa Municipality announced Sunday that the city’s high schools would be open despite the strike. And according to a notice from “Teachers Bring Change,” a teachers’ organization that had mobilized against the strike, “hundreds of teachers” returned to work on Sunday, in defiance of the union, enabling “thousands of students” to return to school.
The open-ended high school teachers’ strike entered its second week Sunday. On Wednesday, Erez, who has been head of the Secondary Schools Teachers Association for decades, said in an interview with the Ynet news site that the strike could continue until after the October Jewish holiday season.
The union and the education and finance ministries have been in deadlocked negotiations for weeks. The main sticking point is the government’s push to allow individual contracts for teachers, which they say will allow for more hiring flexibility and provide wages based on results or ability, instead of seniority.
The union has remained steadfast against this move, saying that individual agreements will make teachers into “contract workers” without the benefits or job security that teachers enjoy, allow for the hiring of unqualified teachers, and lead to lower wages, increased staff turnover and reduced quality of education.
The instructors have also demanded retroactive wage increases and other bonuses that were agreed upon before the last school year began, but which were deferred due to Hamas’s October 7 attack and the outbreak of war.
According to reports, the Education Ministry has offered to provide at least some of the wage increases and bonuses the teachers are seeking.
