"There is no need for unnecessary dramas," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday. "There is no need for the Prime Minister to sit with the head of the teachers' union. It is enough that the Minister of Education and the Finance Minister sit with him."
Speaking at an inauguration ceremony for an advanced technologies zone in Beersheva, Olmert said he is disturbed by the teachers' strike and well versed in all of the details of the negotiations. "We are not fighting the teachers, we respect them," he said.
Olmert acknowledged that the teachers are underpaid. "We need to fix this, but there is no way we can do this in a single day. We are willing to increase their pay by 26 to 24 percent and that is a dramatic, unprecedented rise," he said.