Treasury is close to issuing injunctions for the teachers' strike Israel today

The Ministry of Finance is close to issuing injunctions to the Labor Court that will stop the strike in the education system on September 1, according to sources in the Ministry of Finance who spoke to Israel Hayom.

The Treasury has been working on the restraining orders for a long time, and if it is decided, the attorney's office will submit them.

The negotiations at this stage have reached a dead end, and only four days before the start of the school year the gaps between the parties are still large and numerous.

The Ministry of Finance says that they will do everything so that the school year starts, including the submission of restraining orders.

Let's recall that Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman did not rule out the possibility of submitting injunctions against shutting down the education system and to the question of whether the orders would be submitted, he replied: "There is no doubt, but first we will try to exhaust the negotiations."

Secretary General of the Teachers' Union Yaffe Ben David, photo: Koko

Lieberman added: "The easiest thing is to follow the advice they give me - to pour in money, and everyone would clap their hands and come to Zion Goel. I don't want to keep more of the same. I'm not going to sign anything I'm not satisfied with."

According to the Minister of Finance, "It is very important to prevent a strike, but not at the price we give up. The collective agreement with the Teachers Union expired in 2016, it is not by chance that they have not been able to extend it since then. I do not know when the next opportunity will be."

"peripheral damage to the economy"

The Israeli court recognized worker sanctions and a strike as a right reserved to them by virtue of Israel being a democratic country where freedom of protest is a candle to its feet.

The courts adopted the workers' organizations as having the authority to announce sanctions, even though the workers themselves are not interested in it or were not asked about it at all.

But the workers' organizations, in this case the teachers' organizations, are not the last word.

The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education have the right to request from the labor courts an order that will prevent the strike of the workers' committee.

First as a temporary order, and after the legal hearing even a permanent order.

There are several criteria and tests according to which the court will issue an injunction and prevent a strike.

First, the legality of the strike which is derived from the party that announced it and the nature of his claims in relation to previous agreements with the employer or new and reasonable claims regarding demands for new conditions.

On the way to a strike?

Closed class, photo: Lior Moldovan

The second test and the one that currently occupies the public discourse is the damage balance test.

A strike will always cause damage to the employer, but in certain circumstances it will cause damage to the public itself.

The court must examine the proportionality of the damage and whether it is not too high in relation to the claims of the protestors.

The High Court of Justice determined this and worded it this way: "The damage that may be caused to the general public must be considered and taken into account, since there is damage to the public that exceeds the weight and negative effect of the damage caused to the individual."

The teachers' union strike is causing enormous damage to the State of Israel and widespread peripheral damage to the economy.

This is in addition to harming the students themselves.

This is how the Ministry of Finance is expected to claim and add that during a recession one should exercise restraint with the strike tool and exhaust the negotiations.

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