Israeli teachers strike analysis

The analysis of WAC is totally off, and they got some of the facts wrong too. Sorry for the lack of linguistic polish on this message, I'm pressed for time with my own union business:

- In 'New Horizon' , the pay raise is fictional: teachers would have to work double the hours to get the increased wage, so the per-hour wage would drop. Actually, it's worse, because teachers work many hours which aren't counted as such for various technical and political reasons I'm not well-versed enough in, and this scheme would only acknowledge some fraction of these hours as extra work. Actually, you can figure this out yourself from the WAC text by seeing how opposed the HSTO was to 'New Horizon' and to the fact that it's mostly a recasting of Dovrat.
- WAC contradict themselves, saying first that only veteran teachers earn between 4000 NIS and 7000 NIS, then saying that "most teachers" do. The first statement is true. Beginning teachers earn well under minimum wage and are dependent on state wellfare to reach the minimum.
- The HSTO has the undemocratic trait of allowing the managing committee (3-5 people IIRC) to sign collective agreements for the entire organization without needing ratification by a wider body. Of course, the Teachers' Histadrut is the complete opposite of democracy, but "relatively democratic" doesn't cut it.
- At the big rally where Ran Erez was talking about a "struggle for the welfare state", one of the other speakers, a veteran teacher, said that we want is "double the pay, half the class sizes".
- WAC completely disregard the fact that this is a _women's_ struggle. Almost all teachers are women, and for well-educated women, high-school teaching is perhaps a quarter or more of the entire job market. Occupations mostly taken up by women often suffer from low status and pay regardless of the necessary qualifications for them.
- Erez stopped the strike and signed an agreement which basically preserved the status quo. True, it averted the lethal reform the government had planned, but teacher's pay sucks just like it used to. More importantly, the strike could have _easily_ continued. There were dozens of schools who announced they would ignore the court's orders to go back to work. There was overwhelming public support despite the negative media coverage. There were teacher and teacher-student demos every day in many many places all over the country. The matriculation exams were in danger, so the government was under pressure... a little more effort and the teachers could have won a real victory.
- The previous point was no suprise, because if you look at the HSTO's _demands_, you will be hard-pressed to find anything significant, or that can't be shaken off by spending policy changes . _That's_ why WAC say "Like any agreement that comes at the climax of a long and difficult strike, this one left many loose ends. There is no certainty as to whether its positive components will be implemented." That's not like _any_agreement_, that's like any _sucky_ agreement.
- "An additional increase, accumulating to 26%, is conditional: the teachers will get it if, in the coming half year, they reach agreement with the government on reforms." <- again, not an increase, but a decrease, requiring 28% additional hours per week. Now, this includes some acknowledgement for hours that teachers already put in, but I'm not sure to what extent.
- Schools have deteriorated not only as a result of budget cuts but also to a great extent due to poor curriculum policy choices (bad math program, too much resource wastage on ideological crap, etc); the budget cuts made a bad problem much much much worse.
- "the new Kadima-Labor coalition pledged to soften the draconian measures of Netanyahu and implement a policy attuned to the needs of the poor." <- if you call a demagogic speech on TV a pledge, then yeah. Otherwise, no such pledge.
- "The [labor] court was founded to defend their rights, including the right to strike" <- Ha ha ha, LMAO. The whole 'rights' business is laid to bare as defeatist ideological construction with such creations as a labor court. Striking is not your right, striking is a possibility you gain by collective force. Having a court administering your 'rights' means you can't strike unless the state ok's it. Which is what that court is for, mostly - banning certain strikes. (To be fair you can sometimes win against individual employers who refuse to pay agreed wages etc in these courts.)
- "The strike surprised the government. It must be admitted, however, that the union was also caught off guard. " <- how is this possible? It wasn't a wildcat strike, the HSTO made the decision to go on strike. And the 'new horizons' debate was already going on for a while. What were they caught off guard by? That's just an excuse for the fact they didn't raise better demands.
- "no voice was given to the special claims of the Arab sector, which suffers from systematic discrimination in the field of education." <- of course not, the HSTO and most teachers are very loyal to the state. In the demonstrations, Erez and others would talk about how they have to train the new generations of army recruits, and that in this dangerous area, a deterioration of the education system might spell the downfall of the state or something like that. There was lots of waving of the national flag in the demonstrations. But it's 'funny' that WAC focus on the question of discrimination of Arabs rather than on the major demands the HSTO should have made - a large base pay increase, a cap on the number of students per class, etc.
- "The hostility of the government, the Histadrut and the Labor Court raises the question: what coalition of forces can support the teachers in the future—or workers in other sectors?" <- The High-School teachers are ~30,000 people, 1.5% of the workers in Israel. They don't need any coalition to support them. They can struggle and win practically whatever they want, if they organize properly. And if they were serious enough they would try to mass-steal members from the Histadrut, and lead a strike of the entire school system, ~100,000 teachers - a possibility which is not at all far-fetched.