The Finance Ministry official charged with salaries, Effie Malkin, on Monday morning said that his office is making every effort to reach an agreement with the Teachers' Union, in order to allow all schools to begin the school year on time.
"We are still at an early stage in the negotiations," Malkin told Kan Reshet Bet in an interview.
"We are at a point where the chairman of the Teachers' Union, Ron Erez, has said that he is not willing to speak about how the pie will be sliced before he knows that the Finance Ministry is committing itself to the pie that he wants."
Teachers' Union chairman head Ron Erez said that the Finance Ministry is telling the media "spins," among other things in order to make the teachers out to be refusers.
"There is no realistic proposal, including a proposal to raise teachers' salaries," he said. "The opposite is true: The Finance Ministry is trying to make things worse, offering us to reduce the number of school hours, instead of adding to our salaries."