High school teachers’ strike to continue for a third day on Tuesday

Israeli high school teachers will not come to work on Tuesday, which will mark the third day of a strike that began on the first day of the new school year.

Despite negotiations today, there was “no progress on essential issues or economic issues,” the Secondary Schools Teachers Association says in a statement sent to members.

Another meeting is set for tomorrow morning, the statement says.

The strike, called by association head Ran Erez last week, covers instructors teaching 10-12th grade, but some 9th grade classes are also affected.

The Secondary School Teachers Association has been engaged in ongoing yet deadlocked negotiations with the education and finance ministries, with instructors demanding retroactive wage increases and other benefits 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.

The union is also seeking a collective salary agreement, a major sticking point in the negotiations, while the government has pushed for individual contracts for teachers amid a budgetary shortfall.

The high-school teachers’ strike is a separate action from the general one-day strike called by the Histadrut today, which closed kindergartens and caused elementary and middle schools to close early in many parts of the country.