"The teachers are furious. I've never seen anything like this in my life."

A week ago, on 1.5, all public sector employees received a payslip with a new item: "Economic Efficiency Law" [חוק התייעלות כלכלית or Khok Hitya’alut Calcalit – LS]. This clause reduced their salaries by 3.3% and was intended to fund the state's never-ending war expenses in Gaza. Following the cut, nursery teachers and schoolteachers began striking from Friday (2.5). This strike is unprecedented: an entire sector striking spontaneously, managing to organically and bottom-up organise communication channels between teachers and nursery staff across the country, establishing its own leadership within days – all in direct and outright opposition to the position of the professional union that supposedly represents them.

What happened now, of all times, to push education workers [see comment below – LS] to the brink? After all, wage cuts, worsening of already dire working conditions, and disrespect towards teachers are not new phenomena. And why is it specifically education workers who are leading the protest against the government’s economic decrees and war policies, rather than other sectors whose employment conditions were similarly worsened?

Anger, rage, frustration

If there was one thing that came up repeatedly in my conversations with teachers trying to understand the situation, it was intense feelings of anger, rage, and frustration. Hadar (a pseudonym, as are all names in this article), says she’s never seen anything like it in her life. Hadar is a behavioural analyst at a special education school in Tel Aviv. Special education never goes on strike or stops working – not during COVID and not under rocket fire. “Special education staff always show up out of deep dedication, because children on the autism spectrum need stability. But now, even special education teachers are striking. That means they’ve been pushed to the edge.”

What pushed them to the edge now, specifically?

“To me it’s clear that it’s not just about the current pay cut, the problem started much earlier. A teacher cannot make ends meet on their salary, cannot pay their monthly [expenses – LS]. You can’t live off this: rent, food. It’s just not possible. The salary is so low – it’s absurd. And because of that, workers leave, and the workload for those who stay becomes greater. Interns, with zero years of experience, are becoming homeroom teachers. In the past, in special education, there was a clear division between homeroom teachers and support teachers. Interns were usually support teachers who received guidance and mentoring from the homeroom teacher. But because there are no available posts, interns have to be homeroom teachers without support teachers. You understand? There’s no staff left to teach your children. The education system is collapsing. Some subjects are no longer being taught because there are no teachers. And it’s not just with us. It’s insane. This job is hard and exhausting. From the moment you arrive at work until the moment you leave, you’re working full force, non-stop, for 6–7 hours. There are days you don’t even have time to go to the toilet.

And then, on top of all that hardship and low pay, the payslip arrives and a teacher sees they’re missing 600–700–800 shekels. You’re just overwhelmed. They say a frog doesn’t notice it’s boiling because the water heats slowly. Well, maybe they turned the heat up a bit too fast. So the frog noticed. The teachers are furious. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Noa, a subject teacher at a special education school, also describes the mood at her school following the pay cut. “There was huge anger, and a feeling of humiliation. I mostly feel like they’re underestimating us, our intelligence, our work. They think we’re not important and not smart enough to read the agreement they signed over our heads. They’re laughing in our faces.”

Finance Minister Smotrich said we’re at war and called on teachers to ‘get under the stretcher’ [see comment below – LS]. What would you say to him?

“Let him come into a classroom and teach a lesson.”

What would he see?

“For instance, in our special education school, he’d see there’s no staff,” Noa says. “He’d see we work non-stop, and sometimes I don’t have time to pee. He’d see a tired and frustrated team. He’d see that every day there’s missing staff and we have to improvise. The schedule changes daily because we’re constantly plugging holes. It’s survival mode every week. He’d see young women, 25 years old – exhausted. At 25 you’re not supposed to be tired – you should be in your prime!”

This situation has existed for years, why are teachers striking now, of all times?

“I think it’s happening now because, for the past five years, ever since COVID, teachers have been asked to give more and more. We’ve constantly had to reinvent ourselves. We have to be strong for the children. Some teachers have kids who were called up for military reserve duty. Some of them were killed in the war. And amidst all this difficulty, we’re expected to keep being the resilient ones for the children. When there’s a rocket siren and I run with the children to the shelter, I’m scared – but I have to be strong for them. When I’m with autistic children in the shelter during a siren, they have meltdowns. It’s hard. So not only are we expected to do all that – but on top of it, ‘get under the stretcher’, meaning, they’re taking away the little money we were getting.”

No trust

The lack of trust the striking teachers feel towards the system came up repeatedly in conversations. Being told to “get under the stretcher” and reluctantly accept the cut to their already meagre salaries, while Knesset members and ministers raise their own pay, is not seen as just another cynical comment from corrupt politicians, but as a symptom of a broader crisis of trust. This pay cut doesn’t feel like a legitimate tax, but like theft. According to Hadar, “If there was trust in the government, and we didn’t feel like money was being stolen from us, maybe people would have tolerated the cut. Because for a long while [after October 7th - TA] there was a feeling of togetherness. But that’s over.”

In addition, the Ministry of Education’s response to the strike only deepened teachers’ sense of mistrust. Many education workers refused to be interviewed for this article for fear of being identified and subjected to financial sanctions by the Ministry. Those who did agree to speak, did so only under the condition of anonymity.

Noa, like many teachers, does not work full-time as a teacher. “On Wednesdays I work in my private business, and when I told colleagues at school that I plan to work in my private business, I got messages from them not to post about it on social media. That I’m putting myself at risk. The Ministry of Education is issuing disciplinary summonses to teachers to prevent the strike. It’s insane. Teachers are afraid of being persecuted.”

Michal, a homeroom teacher at a state school, says she’s not impressed by the threats. “No one is taking the threats of dismissal seriously because there’s such a severe shortage of teachers. Right now, the worry is over the threat that they won’t pay for sick days taken during the strike, [see comment below – LS] but it’s not even clear whether that’s legal.”

A main target for the teachers’ anger and disappointment was the Teachers’ Union [הסתדרות המורים or Histadrut HaMorim – LS]. “The union sold us out,” Hadar says. “There’s a lot of anger at Yaffa Ben-David [the Union’s director – LS] because they accepted the agreement with the Finance Ministry, and basically the union told us not to strike.” Michal also says: “The union doesn’t properly represent the interests of the teachers.” Therefore, she says, there has been lively discussion within protest groups about their relationship to the union. “There’s a wide conversation about leaving the union and forming a new one. The teachers’ [grassroots – LS] organisation is already about much more than just reversing this specific pay cut. It’s clear we’re on the verge of something much more significant than just reversing the pay cut.”

Two parallel processes have brought us to this edge point. First, the long-term collapse of the education system through the erosion of teachers and their working conditions, a process years in the making. Second, the rapid breakdown over the past two years of teachers’ trust in the government, in the Ministries of Finance and Education, and their disappointment and anger towards the Teachers’ Union, which no longer represents their real interests. These two processes have led to a point where teachers are no longer willing to continue propping up the current social order, an order that seems to have abandoned them to suffer alone.

Women’s power

This [grassroots – LS] movement brings with it a wave of emotion, not all negative. Alongside the anger, disappointment, and disgust, there was a noticeable sense of empowerment in our conversations.

Michal says the protest’s immediate demand is “to cancel all the cuts entirely, without deducting salary from teachers who took sick leave and went on strike.” But she says the long-term goals are far more ambitious. In 2026, the collective wage agreement is set for renegotiation, and the aim is to come prepared “with much broader demands. To elevate the status of teachers.”

According to Michal, the dire state of the education system led to something unexpected: “The teacher shortage is so severe that teachers are starting to realise how much power they have. If all the teachers unite and the schools shut down, it disrupts the economy. So there’s now an understanding that we have a great deal of power, in contrast to our [pay and employment – LS] conditions. The [current – LS] social status, salary, and working conditions indicate [teachers are - LS] a supposedly weak sector, but in reality, we have enormous power.” She says teachers are beginning to understand their strength when they act together, “and that in itself is something very meaningful that’s already happened,  regardless of the outcome of this particular strike.”

Noa also highlights the gendered aspect: “This is a women’s protest. A protest of strong women. And it’s not just about money. It’s about recognition that education matters. And that’s something very feminine. The truth is, capitalist men don’t care about education. They care about money. And women do care about education. Smotrich says we’re fighting over a few percentage points. That’s not the fight at all. We’re fighting for recognition that education is not trivial. It’s not percentages. It’s life. It’s the whole country. The country survives because of us. We deserve to be compensated for our work, and we also deserve respect and recognition. I’m proud of all the women, all the teachers and nursery staff. So I call on all the women in this country, and the men too – support us!”