The Tel Aviv Labor Court on Wednesday accepted the state’s position and instructed teachers who protested pay cuts by taking sick leave this week to “return immediately to work” unless they are actually ill.
The court also instructed the educators not to use this method of protest again. The decision came after a dispute between the Teachers Union and the Finance Ministry, as the routine of kindergarten and elementary school schedules hung in the balance.
Thousands of teachers took a sick day on Wednesday, but the numbers went down, with the educational institutions steadily reopening throughout the country.
Teachers protest amid pay cut plans
The Teachers Union called for a “mass protest” next week. “We will not abandon the teachers with Israel’s future hanging in the balance,” it said.
Tens of thousands of teachers have been on a “sick day” strike since the start of the week. Though negotiations were breached with the Finance Ministry on pay compensations, the damage has already been done, so to speak: Teachers aren’t satisfied, and parents are having to manage childcare and their own jobs.
The decision to strike came after the Finance Ministry imposed budget cuts on teachers’ salaries, due to what it said were war expenses as part of a larger financial framework.
The cut was 3.3% of their salaries. The teachers argued that the compensations for the pay cuts were neither appropriate nor adequate, unlike Histadrut labor federation workers, who received several more vacation days to make up for the cuts.
The sides agreed on Sunday to lessen the pay cuts by half and to add vacation days to the teachers’ calendars as compensation. However, many teachers had already called in sick, and the damage to morale was already done, especially in a field that is notoriously overworked and underpaid.