What’s Good for the Goose, is Good for the Junior Lecturer
I have written several times about the senior lecturers’ strike in Israel. It ended after 90 days. According to this article in the Jerusalem Post The lecturers didn’t get the 25 percent pay raise they demanded, but did land a healthy 15.3 percent raise effective immediately, as well as a “future wage erosion mechanism of 1.5% per year from 2007-2015,” according to the newspaper.
As for the “junior faculty” (the temporary faculty who make up 40 percent of the Israeli professorate) who taught during the strike, the new agreement didn’t include them. This is the second time that the senior lecturers have left their colleagues twisting in the wind. In 1994, evidently, after another lengthy strike, they signed an agreement which excluded their junior faculty colleagues.
I’ll be watching this situation closely, of course. According to this piece in the Jerusalem Post, junior lecturers in Israel are demanding “equal rights,” and have threatened to strike if their demands concerning pay and job security are not dealt with by the Ministry of Education.