The Israeli high school teachers union has announced plans to hold a mass demonstration in Tel Aviv Wednesday night to protest the cut to teachers’ pay that went into effect for this month’s paychecks.
The pay cut, which was agreed to by the government as part of the broader cut to public sector pay, will reduce teachers’ salaries by 3.307%. The law’s phrasing allows for the cut to be enacted without relying entirely on a reduction of the base pay: for example, the union of preschool, elementary school, and middle school teachers reached an agreement to delay future pay raises in order to reduce the current pay cut. That agreement also included the introduction of two additional paid days off.
Last week, many elementary and middle school teachers, frustrated with the agreements reached by their union, staged an unofficial protest by calling in sick. Around 25,000 teachers reportedly took part in that action.
The Education Workers Struggle Forum called on Thursday for teachers to continue staying home in protest, without explicitly saying that teachers should use their sick days.
“As education workers on the ground, we succeeded this week in changing the rules of the game,” the group said in a statement. “Our struggle this week has already resulted in a massive accomplishment—we dramatically lowered the awful cut to the conditions of teachers, we protested with incredible strength, we forced the elementary and middle school teachers union to act, and now the high school teachers union has also announced that it will join our struggle for the full cancellation of the pay cut. Our struggle has only just begun and it will continue at full force.”
The protesters emphasized the importance of a strong education system to a secure and democratic society. “For too many years, we’ve stood by as we watched the education system breaking down before our eyes,” they wrote. “This is our mission and our responsibility to parents and teachers. We will continue to act, tomorrow and in the days and weeks to come, in many ways, in order to save the education system of the state of Israel.”
Ran Erez, chair of the high school teachers union, said that the protest is meant as an apolitical gathering intended to “prevent additional harm to teachers” and promote the school system and its students and teachers.
Erez criticized the elementary and middle school teachers union for holding the unofficial strike last week. Under Israeli labor law, any strike held in protest of a law is considered political and therefore illegal. Since the teachers’ pay cut is the result of the broader public sector pay cut law, the teachers’ actions are therefore illegal, Erez said, adding that the elementary and middle school teachers are also bound by a clause in their contract against such protests.
