Tag it:

Statistics

According to the report of Or Kashti in Haaretz on 13 December 2007, teachers will receive an immediate 4.5 percent salary increase and an additional four percent in January 2009. In exchange, teachers must add two hours of instruction with “small groups of weaker or stronger students.” Teachers will also receive a five percent increase, previously agreed upon with the General Union (Histadrut), in wake of a previous agreement with the Teachers’ Union, and four percent as partial compensation for accumulated salary degradation resulting from the rise in the consumer index. Therefore, today, the teachers will receive a 13.5 percent salary increase, and another four percent next year, a total increase of 17.5 percent. If, within the next six months, the teachers agree to an overall educational reform plan—a subject that will be addressed later in this article—they will receive an additional 8.5 percent, total increase of 26 percent.

Within this framework, the Teachers’ Organization agreed to two months without salary (the period of the strike) in order to assist in funding a portion of the salary increase; to commit itself to “quiet” until 2012(!); and to make due with a promise from the Prime Minister to act to limit the number of pupils per classroom and to return the classroom hours that were previously abolished.

The Israeli press is currently occupied with analyses of the failed teachers’ strike. Yossi Kochik, Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office under Ehud Barak, announced in an interview on the day the agreement was signed that “they could have signed the same agreement already one month ago!” Kochik was partner to the attempts to break apart the teachers’ leadership, together with Ofer Eini, Director General of the Histadrut. In the written press, Eini hints that the strike was a waste of time, with unnecessary foot-dragging. Pretending to represent the will of the people, Kochik and Eini strengthen the feeling of derision toward the teachers’ leadership, portray them as unwilling to compromise, drunk with power, and maintaining that the leadership could have saved us all the headache of the strike that lasted 55 days.

Ofer Eini, in an interview on the television program Meet the Press on 15 December, noted several important details in relation to the agreement reached. According to Eini, already one month ago, the option existed for a compromise similar to what was reached. These are negotiations in which everyone knows of the existence of ceilings that cannot be passed. According to Eini, there were three constraints already at the beginning of the struggle of the unionized teachers belonging to the Teachers’ Organization. The first constraint was that it was not possible to break the agreements signed with the Teachers’ Union. Such a situation would have necessarily resulted in a demand to equalize conditions for all teachers. If the Ministry of Finance would give more to the Teachers’ Organization than to the Teachers’ Union, the Teachers’ Union would break the agreement and demand a salary raise. If the Ministry of Finance would give less to the Teachers’ Organization, they would switch camps and join the Teachers’ Union in order to improve their situation.

The second constraint was that the Treasury would not agree to break the framework of the overall salary agreements. Thus, the Teachers’ Organization did not possess the ability to break the agreements between the Histadrut, the state and the employers. The third constraint—and this was explained by Eini in great detail—was that Ran Araz, leader of the Teachers’ Organization, was chained by concepts of the public relations people who worked with him. The teachers raised their demands beyond the issue of salary and demanded improvements in teaching conditions: a lowering of the number of pupils per classroom from 41 (according to the legal standard) to 25 and a return of all the teaching hours previously cut.

Accordingly, one who listened carefully to Eini understands that in essence the entire strike was completely unnecessary. The Teachers’ Organization could have signed an agreement together with the Teachers’ Union a long time ago, perhaps even before the strike, an agreement guaranteeing the most possible in the framework of the overall agreements, and could have decided that the professional association is not interested in intervening in issues of pedagogy.

The “New Horizon” Agreement

In this same interview Eini volunteered information that no one had spoken of previously. He spoke about the seemingly new agreement between the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education and the Teachers’ Union, dubbed “New Horizon,” an agreement published on the website of the Ministry of Education. This agreement has yet to be signed, because (amongst other reasons) a majority of teachers refuse to sign it. The Director General of the Teachers’ Union hurriedly announced that he was “cheated” in the negotiations. That is to say, he must retreat from his agreement, which is not acceptable to his constituents.

The “New Horizon” agreement currently stars in television advertisements, which represent a new low in manipulation of the press. The agreement is good for the Ministry of Finance but not for the teachers. This agreement essentially involves salary increases for additional working hours. It is absurd, but the entire addition of working hours implies that teachers only work in instruction in front of a class, but do not work in preparing lessons, holding individual meetings with pupils, meetings with parents or teachers’ meetings. They do not go out with students on annual school trips, and do not attend summer planning sessions. In reality, the vast majority of teachers invest numerous hours in their job, above and beyond their actual teaching hours. They do this because they care and, for these jobs they were given, over the years, additional money.

The difference is that this time, the teachers are required to be physically present at school. The teachers are willing to stay longer hours, but they then say “don’t ask us for additional work from home, not in correcting homework and not in preparing lessons, nothing apart from what was completed during these extra hours at school.”

The problem lies in the perception of teaching and the perception of the teacher in society. The ruling ideology of today views the teacher as another type of leech, a state employee who works only a few hours and should thus earn a low salary. One who wants a larger salary should work more hours. This ideology is part of the process of a general retreat in the function of the state as a provider of services to its citizens.

The role of school in the framework of pubic education is to theoretically permit social mobility required in a modern society. The neoliberal retreat essentially means the destruction of public education and the transformation of teachers into loyal servants of the upper-middle class. Accordingly, they must know their place. They must work hard to justify their pathetic salary. A type of return to the beginning of the 20^th century, in which children of the bourgeois aristocracy had private teachers, who functioned both as teachers and babysitters. The impoverished people during this period either studied in religious frameworks (best-case scenario) or did not study at all.

Against this background, the “New Horizon” agreement must be understood.

The previous government wanted to forcibly impose the Dovrat reforms in one blow, similar to the use of a nine-pound hammer on the heads of the teachers. In contrast, the government today, in the style of Minister of Education Yuli Tamir and Minister of Finance Ron Bar-On, aim to do so “with agreement,” i.e. using the salami method (taking away one slice at a time). This is derived from the understanding of the Ministries of Finance and Education that it is impossible to force the teachers to accept the logic of privatization, which forms the foundation of the Dovrat reforms. The Dovrat reforms suggest a general privatization of the education system and an almost doubling of the working hours of the teachers, and it therefore failed. The new system set the precedent of salary raises for additional working hours. In other words, there is no salary raise for the present working hours. Additionally, alongside the “reform,” there is no guarantee of a pedagogical-budgetary change. Thus, teachers must continue working in front of 41 pupils (the number one cause of burnout and failure in studies), while the demands for success in studies are higher, but must be done in fewer hours. This is an absurd situation that everyone can see is unreasonable, impossible to execute and which will eventually result in a new round of blaming the teachers.

So what is Missing Here?

Ran Araz and his leadership are not the real story. Araz is a product of his time, and he has acted as the leader of a professional union in a period in which social struggles are suffering serious setbacks.

Further, Araz represents the style of the new political leadership: no move is made without public relations experts. These experts ostensibly know better than the general public what is good.

The teachers conducted a difficult battle, without wide public support. However, they still attempted to demand not only a raise in their salaries, but a change in the government priorities and advancement of education. The teachers should not be accused of having too high hopes. The teachers admittedly accepted the social rules of the game by combining a strike with negotiations, but there is no meaning to the claim that they should not have raised topics more general than their salary and the conditions of their employment. In this sense, the Teachers’ Organization was correct in contending that the struggle was not only for a higher salary, but also for better education.

Nothing should be expected from the Histadrut. The policies of Eini will continue to be those of mediating and not of initiating. As a mediator, he is compelled to be loyal to both sides of the conflict, and as such, he has no possibility of properly representing the workers.

The core difficulty of the teachers’ struggle was and will be that it is a fight against the very foundations of the ruling policies and ideology. Policies today refer to the destruction of the space for professional unions, destruction of the space for state ownership and destruction of the space of responsibility for a state of welfare, health and education. When we speak of a better salary for teachers and of reasonable working conditions in which they can reach their goals, this directly conflicts with the policies of all Israeli governments over the past fifteen years.

The lack of minimal solidarity amongst the teachers themselves is the primary expression of the struggle’s failure. Teachers from the same school were divided between those who struck and those who did not. Here we are not talking about an expression of solidarity between groups of workers from different places of employment. These teachers were from the same workplace, the same system. This is the most difficult conflict for workers. A lack of professional solidarity is also expressed in the struggle at the universities and other places.

As long as the state shakes off its responsibility, privatization marches forward, the social stratification and the wealth of the state’s barons dictate the ruling ideology, it will be more difficult to wage a battle and there is a greater need for solidarity. Solidarity is not required to the level of revolution, but to attain principled achievements. A professional union that understands that a struggle must be waged, not only about salaries but also to present policy demands, requires even more solidarity. The classic struggle of a professional union is good for days in which the state is prepared, in accordance with its policies, to distribute more pieces from the socioeconomic pie. However, those days are long gone.

During the strike, there was public solidarity with the teachers, but as in numerous cases from the past, this was not translated into assistance with the struggle itself. There was no suggestion that “this time we will join the teachers’ struggle, and next time they will join our struggle.” In these conditions, the chance for success is practically nil.

Despite this low chance of success, the intention here is not to argue that the teachers should not have begun their struggle at all. The belief in the righteousness of the path, and not the attempt to predict ahead of time the chances of success, is what brought the teachers to the struggle. This belief can build alternatives, organize people and renew the struggle.

My heart is with you, teachers, now that you are again in the classrooms, dealing daily with tens and hundreds of children, struggling together for better education. Do not let your spirits fall. The children are watching you.

Marcello Weksler is Director of Educational Program for Marginalized Youth, Tel Aviv; and Board Member of the AIC.