Junior lecturers threaten to disrupt university classes

One-to-two hour disruptions may begin as soon as Thursday.

By ABE SELIG
University 224.88 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
University 224.88
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
While last-minute talks between the Treasury and the presidents of the universities last week allowed the 2008/09 academic year to begin as scheduled on Sunday, the forum of university junior lecturers is now threatening to disrupt classes if agreements reached over the summer concerning their terms of employment are not implemented within two weeks. The junior lecturers said they might begin disrupting classes as soon as Thursday. Before the agreements - a deal was made in principle in May and then another in writing in August - junior lecturers were employed as external staff; they received an hourly wage, and were only paid for eight months a year. They had no pension plan or social or academic benefits, such as eligibility for a sabbatical. The so-called successful negotiations over the summer were supposed to take care of those issues. Now, junior lecturers say, the provisions laid out in those negotiations need to take shape. The disruptions are to begin with one-to-two hour breaks in teaching, effectively canceling the classes that were scheduled to take place at those times. If their demands continued to go unanswered, a junior lecturer told The Jerusalem Post, even longer disruptions - up to half of the teaching day - could be expected. Then of course it would simply become a full-fledged strike. "We're only asking that the conditions set forth in the agreements reached with the university presidents be implemented," said Shai Melcer, vice chairman of the coordinating forum for university junior staff. "We will not accept a delay in the implementation of the agreement and we certainly won't accept anything less than what has already been agreed upon." Melcer, who was on his way to a meeting with Council of University Presidents head Menachem Magidor, told the Post the junior lecturers' demands had been laid out even before the beginning of the 2007/08 academic year, and that his forum's members were at the end of their rope. "When the university heads said last year that they didn't have the funding to open the school year, we were supportive of that move," Melcer said. "Then, when the year opened and the senior staff went on strike, we supported them as well." However, Melcer said, when the senior staff's 79-day walkout - the longest education strike in the nation's history - was finally called off after negotiations with the Finance Ministry, the junior lecturers, who were still in dire need of improved conditions, felt as though they had been pushed aside. "The senior staff was given a generous agreement, and we said, 'The hell with this, we want immediate negotiations, and the university heads began talking with us,'" he said. However, Melcer said the university heads were only "successful in agitating us," as delay followed delay in the negotiations, and then holdups in implementing the agreements. The junior staff was fed up, Melcer said, and they were now prepared to disrupt the new school year, a week after Treasury, Education Ministry and university officials let out a sigh of relief when their negotiations finally proved fruitful. A spokeswoman for the Council of University Presidents said, "We obviously hope the meetings go well, we value the junior lecturers and understand that they are an integral part of the university. We want this to go smoothly." But with months of frustration behind them, the junior lecturers are ready to throw a monkey wrench into the recently-saved academic year. Also on Sunday, an Arab student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem insulted President Shimon Peres while he toured the institution. The student yelled at Peres, calling him "a child-murderer," while the president viewed the newly-renovated Mount Scopus Humanities and Social Sciences Library. Peres was surrounded by guards and the student was immediately distanced from him.