Finance Minister Liberman
Finance Minister Libermanspokesperson

Four days before the official start of the school year, the Finance Ministry is preparing to file an injunction against the Teachers Union with the Labor Court to prevent a teachers' strike as negotiations over teachers' salaries continue to stall, Kan News reported.

Today, talks will be held between representatives of the Finance Ministry and representatives of the Teachers Union, led by union head Yaffa Ben David. The sides hope today's talks will prove decisive in ending the crisis.

In the meantime, the Finance Ministry has been preparing for weeks on the filing of the injunction to forestall a strike if the negotiations do not bear fruit, and will file the injunction in the next day if no agreement is reached.

The Shoresh Institution published a report purportedly showing that Israeli teachers receive higher wages than the OECD average when hours worked are factored in.

The editor of the study, Professor Dan Ben David, an economics expert from Tel Aviv University, claims that elementary school teachers in Israel earn 3% more, middle school teachers earn 16% more, and high school teachers receive a salary 23% higher than the average teacher salary in OECD countries.

Professor Ben David found that the full-time wage gap between veteran and young teachers is not particularly unusual compared to other OECD countries. The prevailing opinions about unusual salary differences between more experienced teachers and less experienced teachers in Israel are not supported by the international comparisons, writes Ben David.

In his research, he found that the wage gap between teachers with 15 years of experience and new teachers increases to 60% in middle schools, which places Israel above over two-thirds of the OECD countries. In contrast, in high schools, the gap of 29% between teachers with 15 years of experience and beginning teachers is lower than most OECD countries.