High school classes were theoretically back in session on Monday morning, after a weeklong teachers’ strike was put on hold by an announcement from Secondary Schools Teachers Association head Ran Erez at close to midnight the night before.
However, “only a few students” arrived in the morning, an Education Ministry source told The Times of Israel, as the last-minute announcement had caught teachers, parents and students by surprise. Last week, highly publicized remarks by Erez indicated that the strike could continue past the October Jewish holiday season.
The morning is “a big mess,” a ministry official told the Walla news site, as the few students who did arrive found out that their friends weren’t there, and then left themselves. Because the announcement “went out around midnight, some didn’t see it until the morning,” the official said.
Nonetheless, as the day went on, some schools reportedly had full or nearly full classes. Some schools were reportedly planning on holding classes for only half of the day on Monday and some of the shuttle services weren’t operating in the morning to bring the students to school.
The 11:30 p.m. announcement Sunday came after a day of extended negotiations that finally yielded a tentative compromise regarding the issue of individual contracts for teachers, one of the major sticking points in the talks.
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In his announcement, Erez said the strike has been “suspended” and teachers were to return to class, but many sanctions put into place by the union still stand, including the withholding of grades. Negotiations with the government were set to continue under threat that the strike could resume if they became deadlocked again.
Secondary School Teachers Association chair Ran Erez attends a Education, Culture, and Sports Committee meeting at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, on June 26, 2024. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The announcement drew a furious reaction from the National Student and Youth Council and the National Parents’ Council, who in a joint statement Sunday night called the announcement a “mockery of Israel’s students.” The groups called on students not to attend school and on parents not to send their kids on Monday, since “the students are not pawns in the hands of either side.”
Teachers Bring Change, a teachers’ organization that had mobilized against the strike, said on Monday that Erez “folded in the dead of night” but because the negotiations were still unresolved, he “continues to harm students, teachers and parents.”
The crux of the negotiations — the union’s desire to “keep 100 percent of teachers under control with a collective wage agreement” and remain steadfast against the Finance Ministry’s introduction of the “alternative income stream” of individual contracts — has effectively blocked teachers from receiving raises and deferred back pay, one of the teachers’ demands that the Education Ministry agreed to in the discussions, the teacher’s group said Monday.
In the union’s late-night announcement, Erez said, “Out of responsibility to the country, teachers and students, and despite the irresponsibility of the Finance Ministry and the ‘blown-up’ negotiations, we announce the strike is suspended.”
View of an empty classroom at a school in Tel Aviv, during a strike of the National Student and Youth Council, on September 12, 2023. (Flash90)
“We continue with other struggles… The fight continues in the game to finish the negotiations,” he said.
The union said teachers were instructed to not submit grades or sponsor activities outside of school grounds such as field trips, except preparations for the annual trip to concentration camps in Poland, considered a rite of passage for Israel’s youth.
Eligible teachers whose salaries were harmed due to the weeklong strike will receive grants covering the missed days, and a fund was set up to provide interest-free loans for teachers affected by the strike, the notice said.
Public pressure had been growing to end the strike, which delayed the beginning of the school year for some 514,000 high school students in 10-12th grades who had already been through a chaotic year of wartime during the previous school year.
In a Sunday statement, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who had been at loggerheads with Erez over salary and contract issues for weeks, said that it was good the strike was over since it “was not justified in the first place, certainly not during a war. The negotiations can continue without harming the students, teachers and parents.”
Finance Bezalel Smotrich speaks during a press conference in the southern city of Ofakim, July 24, 2024. (Liron Molodovan/Flash90)
“In war, you don’t harm teachers and students. Not with strikes and with sanctions,” Education Minister Yoav Kisch said on X.
The developments came after the strike had shown signs of losing its force.
Some Jewish religious schools, including yeshivas associated with the Bnei Akiva movement and some boarding schools, had already been open last week for activities without the striking teachers, and the Education Ministry, also last week, approved an initiative to open “alternative frameworks” to hold non-academic activities for high school students, which was to begin later this week.
In addition, the Haifa Municipality announced Sunday that the city’s high schools would be open despite the strike. And according to a notice from Teachers Bring Change, “hundreds of teachers” returned to work on Sunday, 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.
Education Minister Yoav Kisch, left, and Teachers Union head Ran Erez, right (both photos Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
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 have also demanded 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.
The Education Ministry has reportedly offered to provide at least some of the wage increases and bonuses the teachers are seeking.
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