School staff protest uncompensated work

About a thousand secretaries, administrators, and accountants held a demonstration at noon (Monday) at the government building in Tel Aviv under the title “They don’t work for free”. The rally follows the refusal of the Federation of Local Authorities in Israel and the Ministry of Education to negotiate with UCAPSE, which represents the thousands of workers.

“We are here to be heard. We will not accept that we will be tasked with more and more tasks as if we are transparent and we will not be rewarded,” said one of the event attendees.

The background to the crisis stems from the decision to introduce a program in the schools, which in practice means imposing additional tasks on the women of the administrative staff: from operating the school mechanisms, dealing with suppliers, implementing new models and responding to problems, and to managing large budgets and being responsible for them. The introduction of the system a few months ago led to an increase in the workload and the creation of additional roles and responsibilities that the secretaries have to manage beyond their daily duties.

The chairman of UCAPSE Gil Bar-Tal spoke to the demonstrators and said: “The Ministry of Education wants you to behave professionally and responsibly, but without compensation for your hard work. We say enough is enough. We want the expectations to be realized in wages and additional staffing. From here, we call on the Federation of Local Authorities, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Finance – without adequate compensation for the secretaries, administrators, and accountants – we will not continue.”