The Education Ministry decided to cancel the maternity bonus
("Gmul Em") given for decades to full-time women
teachers with children. For decades mothers of children up to
age 14 received a 10 percent salary bonus, but now the
Education Ministry is claiming that it is making the cut to
motivate them to spend more time with their children at
home.
According to estimates the Educate Ministry will save
millions of shekels per year through this cut, which will
affect thousands of teachers. For instance, a teacher who
earns NIS 6,000 monthly plus, up until now, a bonus of NIS
600. All teachers who work full-time or more (at least 90
percent of full-time) will have their hours cut in accordance
with the pay bonus. Thus a teacher with children who received
a total of NIS 6,600 will be forced to reduce her hours until
her total salary comes to NIS 6,000.
Teachers who heard about the cut said it would reduce their
salaries by hundreds of shekels per month, their hours would
probably not be restored and their pension plans would be
reduced.
MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni told a Yated Ne'eman reporter
that he was astonished by the report. He said he cannot
fathom why the Education Ministry, whose job is to look out
for teachers, is making their lives harder and harder. At
first the Ministry announces it wants to encourage women to
go to work and after they do so it does all it can to give
them slave wages and then proceeds to cut them further, he
said. The result will be fewer good teachers will want to
work in education and the Israeli education system, which is
already at a low point, will continue to deteriorate.
Rabbi Gafni said he would try to have the issue raised for an
urgent discussion in the Knesset Education Committee. In a
letter to Committee Chairman MK Avraham Poraz, Rabbi Gafni
writes, "There is no need to dwell at length about the
enormous damage the education system in Israel will suffer
and the blow to women teachers in Israel. I would be very
appreciative if an urgent committee meeting is held to
discuss this issue."
Ran Erez, head of the Organization of Upper-Grade Teachers,
told Education Ministry Director General Ronit Tirosh, "The
path you are currently following harms women, who are already
discriminated against in terms of salary and working
conditions. This is a decision that harms thousands of
teachers [whose salaries] are already among the lowest in the
public sector."
In another development the State Comptroller's Office forced
the Education Ministry to reverse a decision to stop paying
Guaranteed Income allotments ("Havtachat Hachnasah")
to avreichim whose wives are on sabbatical.
In recent months the director of Degel HaTorah's Bureau for
Public Assistance, Rabbi Shlomo Goldental, received
complaints from avreichim claiming that the Education
Ministry had changed its policy by calculating their Keren
Hishtalmut payments — received while on sabbaticals
— as income that renders them ineligible for Guaranteed
Income. The Education Ministry's Guaranteed Income Committee
reached the decision one year ago and without notice began to
implement it in the middle of the year.
Rabbi Goldental contacted the State Comptroller's Office,
which began to address the matter. Last week Attorney Baruch
Yeshurun, assistant director of the Department of Public
Complaints, wrote the complaint was found justified and the
Education Ministry would have to reverse its decision.
