Academic Staff Organizations at the Universities announced a labor dispute that will come into force in about two weeks

The Coordinating Council of the Academic Staff Organizations at the Universities announced a labor dispute that will come into force in about two weeks - at which point the members of the senior staff will be able to disrupt and even disable studies at the institutions of higher education. The council represents the senior lecturers at the Hebrew University, Ben Gurion University, Bar Ilan University, Haifa University, Tel Aviv University, the Technion and the Weizmann Institute.
The members of the senior staff have been working without a collective agreement since the previous agreement signed with them ended in December 2019, and therefore did not receive the salary increases they were supposed to receive if a new agreement was signed with them.
The members of the senior faculty at the universities are employed by the universities, but their salary is set in an agreement with the Ministry of Finance, therefore the negotiations are supposed to take place between the management of the universities, the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the MLA and the department in charge of salaries at the Ministry of Finance. According to the Coordinating Council, the attempts to advance the negotiations in the years The last ones didn't work.
According to Prof. Anat Zaira, the chairman of the coordinating council of the academic staff organizations, "not only has our salary not increased, but it has eroded significantly in recent years due to the increasing inflation in the economy and the economic uncertainty that characterizes the current period. Since the agreement ended, we have been trying to promote negotiations with the purpose of signing a new collective labor agreement, but the committee of heads of the universities has time and together with them, the person in charge of the salary at the Ministry of Finance. So far we have refrained from taking organizational steps out of a good will to reach understandings, but the conduct left us no choice. We will consider taking organizational steps that will gradually escalate."
The university presidents' committee responded: "The university presidents have been holding negotiation meetings with the heads of the coordinating council of the senior academic staff for about a year now.
"During the meetings, various issues were discussed, most of which require the agreement and approval of the OT and the salary supervisor. We regret that the senior faculty chooses to take organizational steps that may harm the students at the end of the semester and will not in the least advance the understandings we seek to reach with them."