Progress made in high school teachers’ strike negotiations; talks continuing — report

Negotiations today between the high school teachers’ union and the education and finance ministries have shown some progress, according to a report in The Marker.

A tentative compromise has been reached regarding the issue of individual contracts for teachers, one of the major sticking points in the negotiations, but must still be reviewed further, according to the report.

The negotiations between the parties are expected to continue into the night, a spokesperson for Education Minister Yoav Kisch tells The Times of Israel.

The open-ended high school teachers’ strike began on September 1, the first day of the new school year, and entered its second week today. Since the strike began, each day, union head Ran Erez has sent a notification that the action would continue for another day.

There are some 514,000 high-school students (10-12th grades) in Israel, according to Education Ministry data. Some Jewish religious schools, including yeshivas associated with the Bnei Akiva movement and some boarding schools, have reportedly opened for activities without the striking teachers.

On Wednesday, Erez, who has been head of the Secondary Schools Teachers Association for decades, admitted in a Ynet interview that the strike could continue until after the October Jewish holiday season. His remarks were widely dispersed on Hebrew news and social media sites.

In anticipation of a lengthy strike, last week, Kisch said that the ministry would work with local authorities and youth groups to open “alternative frameworks” to hold non-academic activities for high school students.

That plan has been approved, and various centers around the country are expected to open later in the week if the strike continues, Kisch’s office tells The Times of Israel.

According to a notice from “Teachers Bring Change,” a teachers’ organization that has mobilized against the strike, “hundreds of teachers” returned to work today, in defiance of the union, enabling “thousands of students” to return to school.

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 are also demanding 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.