Teachers Afraid Customary Start-Of-Year Strike Will Get Overshadowed By Other Strikes

“We’re not accustomed to having other big causes capturing national attention and controversy.”

Tel Aviv, August 1 – The 2023-24 academic year begins in elementary and high schools across the country in one month, and the practitioners of the more-or-less-annual game of extortion under the stewardship of the Teachers’ Union voiced concern this week that ongoing protests and work stoppages by other groups will deprive the union of the extensive exclusive publicity its antics usually attract, thus decreasing the political impact of its members’ refusal to do their jobs.

Demonstrations against the government’s legislative measures to alter the balance of power between the judiciary and legislature – measures that proponents insist are necessary to curtail unchecked, and illegal, power the courts have arrogated for themselves – have rocked the country for months. Teachers’ Union representatives expressed their worry that the traditional start-of-the-school-year-strike-to-pressure-the-government-into-increasing-teacher-salaries-and-paid-vacation strike, just as parents have rescheduled their work lives not to have children at home, will garner less attention than in previous years, amid the continued Judicial Reform brouhaha. The diminished attention will sap the ritual of its power in the public mind, and thus its effectiveness.

“This could cause us a problem,” acknowledged a top union official in a leaked internal memo. “We’re not accustomed to having other big causes capturing national attention and controversy, and this poses a challenge for this year’s plan.”

“A quick poll of union officers indicates a desire to push forward with the action,” the memo continued. “However, a number of officials nevertheless expressed their concerns that the union rank and file might prefer not to pursue the action if it runs a significant risk of failure when overshadowed by the other striking and demonstrating bodies. We will therefore conduct a poll of the membership – some of whom may have already structured their end-of-summer plans based on the assumption of a teacher strike. We must assess our membership’s leanings. It will not do to cancel the planned action if a significant portion of our teachers are still vacationing with their families in the Greek Islands, while expected in the classroom.”

Union sources disclosed that this year’s list of demands included the right not to show up to work, unannounced, for extended periods, but the current situation will likely push back that demand to future start-of-the-school-year-teacher-strikes. Union members acknowledged that doing so unilaterally this year may compromise their bargaining position if they are not the primary drivers of everyone else’s misery at the time.

Anti-Netanyahu protest leaders convened this afternoon to determine how to co-opt the teacher strike whether it happens or not.

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