The nation’s high schools and many junior high schools didn’t open on Wednesday morning as the SSTO moved ahead with its threat of an open-ended strike in protest of the lack of a wage agreement between the union and the government. The strike closed between 1,200 and 1,700 junior high and high schools around the country, affecting an estimated 500,000 students who are taught by the 40,000 members of the Secondary School Teachers Organization, the country’s second-largest teachers’ union. The larger National Teachers Union, which represents elementary and junior high teachers in most of the country’s remaining 2,000 schools, won’t be joining the SSTO in the strike due to a wage agreement reached between the NTU and the Finance Ministry in May that provided a significant increase in NTU teachers’ salaries in exchange for increased work hours. According to Finance Ministry figures, the strike will cost the country some NIS 20 million a day, and the ministry has warned that teachers will not be paid “for a single day they are on strike, and this won’t be up for negotiations later. The criticism comes because the National Teachers Union, which has more than twice the membership of the SSTO, reached a deal with the government in May according to which teachers’ starting salaries will rise significantly, to NIS 5,300 per month, and their wages will rise 30% faster than in the previous wage scheme. The SSTO announced this week it will offer interest-free loans, alternate employment, and a special fund for single-parent families, families in which both parents are SSTO teachers, and those hit hardest by the possible loss of salaries if the strike is an extended one. Read More