22,533 Jewish School Children Still on Passover Holidays in Palestine Because of Teachers’ Strike: H

258 schools and kindergartens, 897 teachers and 22,533 pupils are involved in the strike of Hebrew teachers which is now in progress here, following the refusal of the Hebrew Teachers’ Union to accept the wage reductions decided on by the Jewish Agency Executive, in consequence of which the schools have not been reopened after the Passover vacation.

The Vaad Leumi (Palestine Jewish National Council) is holding a special meeting tonight in Tel Aviv to consider the situation with a view to getting the strike called off, and Colonel Kisch and Dr. Wernher Senator, members of the Jewish Agency Executive, and Dr. Berkson, the Director of the Education Department of the Jewish Agency have gone there to attend the meeting.

The teachers have not been paid their salaries since December, the Hebrew Teachers’ Union declares in a statement which it has issued to-day, adding that the Jewish Agency Executive also owes a sum of £5,000 to the Teachers’ Pensions Fund. The Teachers’ Union cannot accept the Vaad Leumi’s offer to act as mediator, the statement proceeds, unless it is first agreed that the decision arrived at is to be binding on both sides; otherwise the dispute should be submitted to arbitration, each side naming an arbitrator.

The Jewish Agency Executive, too, has issued a statement explaining that although the Economies Commission which was appointed by the last meeting of the Actions Committee had recommended reductions averaging 16 per cent. in the salaries of the teachers, the Executive, in view of the fact that a 10 per cent. reduction was made in 1924 decided now to enforce a reduction of only 6 per cent. The Board of Education of the Jewish Agency (Vaad Hachinuch) has made an appeal to the teachers to call off the strike, and has appointed Mrs. Persitz to act as mediator. Dr. Senator agreed to have a full discussion of the position, on condition that the teachers call off the strike, and recognise on principle that they are subject to reducsions of salary, because of the financial crisis, just as much as other employees of the Jewish Agency. The Vaad Leumi administration has taken a similar attitude, but it failed to move the representatives of the teachers who proceeded to issue orders for the strike.

The Palestine Hebrew teachers find themselves frequently compelled to resort to a strike threat on account of the difficult question of their arrears of salary, and strikes of this kind have occurred in most years since 1922. The Zionist Executive has several times explained that the trouble is due to the fact that it is constantly faced by a lack of funds in its Education Budget. In one of its reports the Zionist Executive said: The teachers are profoundly devoted to their work, alive to all problems of education and are enduring the privations which they are made to suffer with exemplary patience. All their good intentions, however, are frustrated by lack of funds. The teachers are not highly paid. Their salary just suffices for a modest living; but it is absolutely essential that payment should be prompt. They are weighed down with cares and debts and some are literally starving. The Government has made energetic representations to us demanding that the teachers’ salaries should be paid. The teachers should be given a reasonable chance to carry out their great task. Their present miserable state reacts harmfully on the atmosphere of the school and its work. The minimum requirements of education work include that the teachers should be relieved of the depressing and humiliating anxieties about means of livelihood.

The situation in which the teachers in the schools of the Palestine Zionist Executive find themselves is cruelly hard, the Palestine Zionist Executive has declared in an official statement. None better than the Palestine Zionist Executive, it said, can appreciate this and none more deeply deplores it than the Palestine Zionist Executive. It has been suggested that the Palestine Zionist Executive should meet its full obligations towards the teachers with respect to salary payments by taking up a loan. This is impossible at present. Under the present system of annual budgeting the Executive statement went on, the educational work passes through a crisis every year. In recent years also the schools have been opened late because there is an insufficient interval between the Congress and the beginning of the school year to make the adjustments rendered necessary by a new budget. It is impossible to build up an educational system under the pressure of annual crises, hysteria, and hectic planning. A three year plan of development is needed for constructive work; the very least possible is a two year plan which would introduce basic changes only one year after the Congress decision.