As far as Israel\u2019s Elementary School Teachers\u2019 Union is concerned, Israel\u2019s second round of elections this year couldn\u2019t have happened at a more opportune time: 16 days after the official start of the school year, amidst negotiations for a new contract. The union threatened to strike ahead of the new school year, and walked away with a significant trophy (and a dangerous precedent for the rest of Israel\u2019s economy): The government agreed to fund pension contributions for an unprecedented portion of the teachers\u2019 salaries, a benefit extended to no other workers in the civilian sector. Other elements of the teachers\u2019 contract will be negotiated in January.
Israel\u2019s next government will have to deal with a serious fiscal crisis: A huge deficit and slowing economic growth. It will no longer enjoy the privilege of showering gifts on public sector unions and special interests. The ground rules of public sector labor negotiations need to be changed. Nobody should be able to count any longer on automatic wage hikes. Every sector should be required to justify the demands it wishes to place upon the taxpayer\u2019s pocket.
As to the teachers\u2019 unions, the time has come to step back and take stock: What have the teachers done for Israeli society recently? What has society done for them? Has the exchange been fair?
Israel\u2019s education budget has doubled since the start of the 21st century. Since 2007 the budget per pupil has risen by 46% in real terms. A very large proportion of that increase has gone into teachers\u2019 salaries. Today, the average Israeli teacher\u2019s salary is higher with respect to the Israeli median wage than teachers\u2019 salaries are, on average, with respect to median wages in rest of the OECD. Class size has declined since the start of the century. Today teachers\u2019 salaries are better on average than those of the parents who pay those salaries through their taxes.
What has Israeli society received in return? Not much. Since Israeli students began taking the OECD\u2019s global Student Assessment exams (PISA) in 2003, their grades have stagnated somewhere below the international average. Israel\u2019s own domestic school achievement exam (the \u201cmeitzav\u201d) show large achievement gaps between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and the gaps haven\u2019t been closing.
Israel\u2019s public education system functions poorly. It\u2019s too centralized, chokes off initiative, and dictates pedagogical methods that were current fifty years ago. This failure has many causes, but the teachers\u2019 unions bear a large share of the blame.
The unions require all teachers to be paid the wages set in the teachers\u2019 collective bargaining agreement. Better teachers cannot be compensated with better pay. The unions also set rigid terms for how teachers\u2019 hours of work are to be utilized in the schools. Pay levels are determined almost exclusively by formal criteria \u2013 paper credentials and the number of years on the job. The rewards to pure time spent on the job in Israel are proportionally the highest of any country in the OECD. Older, burnt-out teachers cling to their jobs because their pay is at a peak, while the pay of starting teachers is low. The most intelligent and enterprising of the latter abandon the profession for greener pastures after a few years. By contrast, firing a poor teacher is almost impossible; no more than 10 or 20 out of 180,000 teachers are fired for professional incompetence each year.
After two decades of granting wage hikes with little to show for them, the Israeli public has the right to make some demands of its own from the teachers\u2019 unions, mainly regarding introducing flexibility into the way teachers are employed:
\u2022 Teaching in the schools (e.g. by a physics or chemistry grad student) should no longer require teaching certificate.
\u2022 The government should be granted license to fire up to 1% of the teachers it employs every year.
\u2022 If any wage increases at all are paid, they should go exclusively to young teachers. Veteran teachers should receive no pay increase, \u201cflattening\u201d the teachers\u2019 wage ladder.
The principle applied to teachers\u2019 wage negotiations should be the same as that adopted in a very different context [negotiations with the Palestinians]: \u201cIf they give something, they can get something; but they can\u2019t get something for nothin<\/p>\n\n\n\n