From Sunday: strike at universities across the country

Tel Aviv University Photo: Moshe Shai, Flash 90

The Coordinating Council of the Organizations of the Senior Academic Staff at the Universities announced today (Thursday) the suspension of classes from this coming Sunday, May 21, at the Hebrew Universities, Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion, Haifa, the Technion, Bar Ilan and the Weizmann Institute. The organizational step that the members of the council decided to take came after for many months the Council of Heads of Universities, along with the Ministry of Finance and the Committee for Planning and Budgeting, did not provide a substantive response to their demand for salary correction due to the erosion that has occurred since the previous agreement ended.

Prof. Anat Zaira, the chairman of the coordinating council of the academic staff organizations in the universities, said: “Our collective agreement ended at the end of 2019, and since then the lecturers’ salary has been significantly reduced. Despite our requests to renew the agreement, we had to wait a long time for negotiations to start. For over a year and a half, we have been negotiating the renewal of the salary agreement, but even though we come to the negotiations with an open heart and a willing mind and offer solutions – it seems that the other side, and especially the University Heads’ Committee (WRA), is stalling for time, holding idle discussions, fortifying in his position and is not really interested in reaching an agreement. Higher education is the growth engine of the economy in Israel, and the measures that the RA is leading may harm the proven successes of the Israeli academy. It is appropriate that the State of Israel allocates the appropriate resources to faculty members as well – after it has found it appropriate to allocate them to other sectors.”

Prof. Zaira added: “We are not asking for an addition to the base salary, but only a correction of our salary in accordance with the erosion that the salary has already suffered and will continue to suffer; not only is our basic demand falling on deaf ears, but we are encountering new demands for far-reaching changes aimed at adversely changing the structure Our wages and working conditions. Things came to a head in the last few days when a delusional and outrageous demand arose that meant a reduction in wages for some of the faculty members. This conduct on the part of the RA brought the negotiations to a dead end. For a long time we avoided taking organizational measures out of a good will to reach understandings, but unfortunately – we came to know that only the use of organizational measures could lead to progress in the negotiations. We did not want that, but the ongoing conduct of the university administrations with the encouragement of the state authorities simply leaves us no other choice.”