News Briefs
Israeli educators go on strike
Nov 1, 2007 3:21 PM
Secondary school teachers in Israel who went on strike on Oct. 10 in a wage dispute with the national government were later joined by the nation’s university staffs, themselves pursuing a 20 percent pay raise after government delays in providing an extra $75 million in support this year. The 120,000 Israeli university students affected by the strike join some 600,000 high school students locked out of their classes.
The Secondary School Teachers Organization is also resisting calls by the government’s finance and education ministries to add three unpaid hours per week to their teaching schedule.
The university strike follows last year’s 41-day student action protesting higher student fees. The faculty union says lecturers’ salaries have been eroded by 15 percent since the last wage agreement was signed with the government in 2001. As many as 3,000 Israeli professors now work abroad, compared with 4,500 still in their own country, and the union blames low wages for what it calls a “brain drain.” While salaries are pegged to inflation in the public sector, academic salaries are not.
Critics denounced the government’s attempts to institute alleged “cost-effective” criteria into education, echoing AFT arguments that ideologically driven market policies and educational values don’t mix.
Haaretz, Oct. 22
Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 22
Jerusalem Post, Oct. 18
