Israel’s News Blog Magazine: Daily Stories Video and PhotosBoth university students and junior lecturers appear to be in a state of (joyful) shock when the word reached them that striking senior lecturers have finally reached an agreement with the Israeli finance ministry to settle a strike that has now been in progress for over 90 days seems to be coming to and end as both sides of the conflict, the lecturers and the government reached a compromise to a proposal in which the lecturers will receive a 15.3 per cent pay raise as compensation for salary erosion between the years 1997 and 2006; with a future additional 1.5% annual increase between the years 2007 and 2015. The lecturers will also be included in a 4.7% pay raise that the government has already agreed to give to government employees.
Once signed, hopefully sometime Friday, the lecturers will be able to return to their classrooms as early as Sunday, January 20. The strike’s end may also be the result of an ultimatum given by university presidents that they would close their institutions completely if the strike wasn’t settled by noon on Friday.
Even if students and lecturers do return to classes on Sunday, the damage caused by the strike has already been done, and students who have been denied the higher education they both enrolled for and paid for may have see the format of their 2007/08 academic year changed dramatically. How the university administrations are going to work out the details for making up the 90+ day strike still remains to be seen, however.
“While I am certainly happy to be able to return to class, I am really angry with both the lecturers as well as the government for letting this thing go on for so long” said Roni, a first year student at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. “Not only did I make several payments towards my tuition and other related expenses, I had to pay rent in an apartment and make other payments while not being able to start my studies. Now that the government has agreed to compensate the professors, what about the students? What are we going to get out of this?”
For Roni, and thousands of students like her, she isn’t going to get anything, other than more aggravation and other hassles due to the “Syllabus restructuring” that will include losing school vacation time and probably the entire summer break as well. As many students use this three to four month period to work in order to pay for tuition and other expenses (including housing) it will be difficult for many students to “restructure” schedules that may affect their entire undergraduate studies.
For this sad reality, the shoulder of blame must be focused on the Finance and Education ministries, as well as possibly the top governmental officials themselves, one of whom made a cute comment during the now settled secondary teachers strike that he was “also once a teacher”. Those who have been following this entire affair know exactly who made these sterling remarks, and on whose desk the “buck stops here”.
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