The Finance Ministry and the Teachers Union reached an agreement that would see a reduction in teachers’ salary deductions from 3.3% to 0.95%, the ministry and union announced on Thursday.
Teachers Union head Yaffa Ben-David told KAN Reshet Bet on Thursday, “I can’t change the law; this wasn’t an agreement, this was a series of understandings. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t touch the public sector, definitely not the teachers.”
She added that the achievements made in lowering the damages of the cuts was significant.
She also called on teachers to go back to work in the meantime and said that the union would continue the legal fight.
Teacher protest groups, however, said that the fight would continue, in what has been the culmination of years of frustration and underpayment of experienced educational staff.
In a broadcast message, the groups said the understandings that were reached “are not good news for us. This is simply the product thing packaged differently, a product that severely hurts us! This affects our physical and mental well-being. We will continue.”
Under the new agreement, the monthly salary cuts, which were expected to range between NIS 300 and NIS 860, will be at NIS 86 and NIS 270 instead.
The agreements also included the postponement of any individual raises by a few months, like veterancy, and benefits, and added two vacation days to the education system - one on this year’s Lag Ba’omer and one next year.
The agreement comes after thousands of teachers went on strike since the beginning of the week, taking sick days to protest the salary cuts.
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.
Planned budget cuts
The protest was less about the cuts and more about the lack of compensation for them, which the Teachers Union said education employees didn’t get, while other public servants did.
Sarah Ben-Nun contributed to this report.