Analysis / 7 Lessons From the High School Teachers’ Strike

This article was published before the teachers union successfully achieved a collective agreement.

The Israeli high school teachers’ strike came to an end on Monday, eight days after it began, without achieving an agreement. Ran Erez, chair of the high school teachers union, said that the union was “moving on to fight in other ways.” Reflecting on the strike can reveal some important insights into the challenges of organized labor in Israel, concerning all workers, not just teachers.

1. 1. It’s hard to lead a strike during a war

The high school teachers’ strike was the first big strike in Israel since the outbreak of the Iron Swords War. Holding a strike during a war meant greater harm to the students and less public sympathy for the struggle. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Education Minister Yoav Kisch used this against the strike, even though the high school teachers union had avoided striking for the past two and a half years as they struggled for a new contract.

From left to right: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Education Minister Yoav Kisch, and chair of the high school teachers union Ran Erez. (Photos: Yonatan Zindler/Flash90)

Of course, the workers’ struggle doesn’t happen in a vacuum. During a conversation with Davar this year, Erez, the union chair, said that “there’s always something” that makes it inopportune for workers to strike for their rights. Once it was Covid, another time it was a government shutdown, and now it’s the war. Erez is right. That said, the choice to go on strike during wartime invites bigger obstacles than doing so during peacetime.

2. 2. The workers’ struggle can't succeed without broad public support

One of the most blatant flaws of this strike, and also of the long struggles that preceded it, is the near-complete absence of any PR activity. The high school teachers union did not organize demonstrations, supporters did not organize shifts to protest outside ministers’ homes, and no one held conversations with parents about the reasoning for the strike. This is the complete opposite of how the elementary and preschool teachers acted during their strike. They organized a massive assembly in Tel Aviv and protested every day on Balfour Street and in front of the private residences of the prime minister and the education minister, which is how most recent workers’ strikes have been carried out in Israel.

The union had its reasons for avoiding PR, and there is no doubt that the war has added to the difficulties. But the results speak for themselves. The lack of demonstrations and public activity strengthened the narrative of the Finance Ministry and most of the media that it was not the teachers themselves who were struggling for pay and their futures, rather the chair of the union alone. Public activity would not have guaranteed success, but it would have shown that a broad public of workers stand behind the strike.

3. 3. It’s difficult to fight against abusive employment tactics

What lies at the heart of the divide between the union and the Finance Ministry is not a question of salary increases. In fact, both sides already agreed on that question last summer. Instead, the main disagreement relates to a reform on the way teachers are employed. The Ministry of Finance has demanded the right to hire teachers and principals with nonunion contracts, without the protection of a collective agreement. The ministry has also demanded the ability to allow administrators to distribute bonuses at their own discretion.

This demand changes the way the school operates as a workplace and paves the way for stratification between teachers, who will be divided into first class and second class workers. It would be similar to having independent contractors doing the same job in the same place alongside salaried employees.

It took a long public strike led by the Histadrut a little over a decade ago for the Israeli public to understand that using contractors as employees is unjust. The high school teachers union is currently facing a similar enemy, but when the fight isn’t about pay, it’s significantly more difficult to garner public support, let alone explain how destructive the point of contention can be. The question of the modes of employment will most likely be the subject of future struggles.

4. 4. The timing worked in the Finance Ministry’s favor

As opposed to other strikes, the Finance Ministry did not seek injunctions on the strike from the labor courts. Similarly, during the past year, when the teachers enacted their own sanctions, the Finance Ministry did not rush to the court. That’s in contrast to two years ago, when the elementary and preschool teachers intended to go on strike. Then, requests for injunctions were submitted, and in the end, a last minute agreement was reached and the school year opened.

The difference between these two instances reflects the trap for high school teachers and their students, one which was also felt during the pandemic: as opposed to children in first grade, high schoolers can stay home alone without parental supervision. When they don’t have school, the economy does not stop and life can continue as normal. Isolation? Depression? Risky behavior? Harm to vulnerable students? From the perspective of the Finance Ministry, as long as the parents are continuing to go to work, they don’t need to care. Thus, they didn’t feel rushed to come to an agreement with the teachers for an entire year, and they could continue to insist on their reforms, which the Ministry of Education never requested. In the end, the students are the ones harmed, and the teachers remain without a contract, and with a salary that hasn’t been updated since the last contract expired.

The Ministry of Finance relied on the fact that the teachers would fold, because of the difficulties mentioned earlier, and also because of the lack of financial support. The high school teachers union has a strike fund, but it can’t cover all the teachers, most of whom can’t afford the financial consequences of a long strike. The challenge for high school teachers, and for all organized workers who don’t have immediate pressures, is how to stand their ground in a fight where all the employer has to do is wait for them to break.

5. 5. The Kohelet Forum is alive and well

The summer before the war, when the fight around the judicial reforms was at its peak, one of the central donors of the Kohelet Policy Forum, an extreme far-right think tank, decided to stop financing the group in response to significant public pressure. The Kohelet Forum, which was the brain behind the judicial reforms, was forced to reduce its activity. With the onset of the war, the pursuit of those reforms was frozen. But the economic arm of the Kohelet Forum, which deals with the promotion of a neoliberal policy, privatization, deregulation, and union breaking, returned to action with full vigor, and came out in force against the teachers’ struggle. Since August 20, nine out of the 19 of the posts on the group’s Telegram channel had to do with delegitimizing the strike.

This is to say nothing of action related only indirectly to the Kohelet Forum. The Teachers Leading Change organization, which received upon its foundation backing and organizational assistance from the Kohelet Forum, actively worked to break the strike—both among individual teachers and among entire schools. There is no doubt that the Kohelet Forum and its branches will work to break any coming strikes in any sector, a move that will require a public, ideological confrontation.

6. 6. The Ministry of Finance threatened to freeze wages

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said last week about planned budget cuts for 2025 that he is looking into freezing wages in the public sector, with the caveat that it would be done only in coordination with the Histadrut. High school teachers’ union chair Erez said Sunday at the negotiation meeting that “the Ministry of Finance is planning to freeze the amount allocated for a salary agreement for 2025.” If that’s true, this would mean that high school teachers’ wages will remain frozen, when in reality they already have been frozen for the past year and a half, while inflation has exploded. Is this the reward that the Finance Ministry offers to teachers for educating the youth of Israel throughout Covid and now war?

It’s possible that these threats were just meant to put pressure on the teachers. But if they truly plan to move forward with this destructive idea, it will be near impossible to reach a salary agreement with the high school teachers when it is unclear what will happen to the rest of the public sector employees.

7. 7. Despite everything, the struggle carries on

Although the strike ended without an agreement, the Finance Ministry’s attempt to impose offensive and far-reaching reforms in the methods of employment of high school teachers has also been stalled, at least for now. This only proves the importance of labor unions, which fight in solidarity for fair working conditions for all, and in this instance against reforms that would damage the most valuable thing in this nation: the education of children.

One must not forget the essence of the matter — organized labor is the basis of a healthy society, a secure economy, and democracy itself. The existence of labor unions must not be taken for granted, and it demands solidarity and struggle. And whoever attempts to dismantle organized labor must be stopped. Otherwise, the workers, the public, and the next generations will pay the price.

This article was translated from Hebrew by Tzivia Gross.