Teachers’ strike over wages shutters kindergartens, elementary schools early

State-run kindergartens and elementary schools closed early at 1 p.m. on Monday due to a strike over salaries being held by one of two major labor unions that represent teachers in the country.

Most schools and kindergartens finish before 2 p.m. in any case, with younger students then attending afternoon programs. Those programs were scheduled to finish around an hour earlier, depending on the arrangements at each site.

The one-day strike by Israel Teachers Union was timed to allow teachers to attend a protest in Tel Aviv later in the evening.

In announcing the action last week, the union said teachers from all education institutions will strike, including special education schools.

The High School Teachers Association and its members will not take part in the protest. The union is involved in a separate dispute over planned matriculation reforms.

The protest came as the Finance Ministry pushes for changes in the annual school summer vacation schedule so it will be coordinated with the High Holiday period in the fall, when many parents anyway take off time from work.

As of Monday, the teachers union was not willing to engage in any negotiations on changing the vacation schedule unless talks are first held on raising the teachers’ salaries, according to Channel 13 news.

On Sunday, Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman gave a joint press conference with the chairperson of the National Parents’ Council and president of the Manufacturers Association of Israel, during which they presented their principles for streamlining the education system.

They stressed that a key element is coordinating parents’ vacation days with that of students.

“We all want to improve the education system and make it more efficient,” Liberman said at the press briefing. He argued the lack of overlap between students’ summer vacations and parents’ time off over the holidays is “impossible to ignore.”

The discrepancy, he said, “is not reasonable and an adjustment is required here.”

Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton responded that “the Education Ministry’s policies are laid down only by the minister who heads it.”

“First of all the treasury’s budgeting departing should give the teachers what they deserve for what they are doing,” she said.

The Israel Teachers Union said in response to Liberman that “it is ridiculous that industrialists and the parents should delineate the employment conditions for teachers.”

“Lieberman seems to have adopted the out-of-touch position of his office’s officials who are closing their eyes in the face of the mass departure of teaching staff, leading to the collapse of the education system as early as the coming school year,” the group said.

In a letter last week addressed to teachers, the union’s secretary-general Yaffa Ben-David warned that unsatisfactory teachers salaries have “put the entire education system at risk of collapse.”

“Many educators have already left the system and many more intend to do so by the end of this year,” Ben-David wrote. “Join us in making our voices heard: Stop destroying the education system! Stop harming teachers!

According to a recent study conducted by Bar-Ilan University, teachers in Israel get a third of the salary that teachers in Germany get, on average.

The study also claimed that Israel was at the bottom end of the scale compared to other OECD countries. It found that the dramatic wage gap did not only affect young teachers in the early stages of their careers, but also veterans, who have been in the system for 15 years and still earn a lot less compared to their colleagues in other developed countries.

Some, however, have argued that the data is misleading because it fails to consider various factors, including that Israeli teachers work fewer hours than the OECD average.

Other studies have indicated that while a gap definitely exists, it may not be as significant. A study published by the Knesset Research and Information Center in December 2020, showed for example that veteran teachers make on average 31% less than veteran teachers in Germany.