Strike News

The three-month-old faculty strike in Israel finally ended last week, Matthew Kalman reports on The Chronicle’s Web site:

The strike was settled on Friday after all-night talks lasting 20 hours involving representatives of the senior faculty members, the Israeli ministries of education and finance, and university presidents.

The agreement gives the professors a 24-percent pay increase in three stages over the next two years, which includes a 14-percent supplement to make up for the erosion of salaries since the last collective agreement was signed in 1997. …

Classes, which resumed Sunday, three months behind schedule, will be extended by up to two months this summer “to catch up on lost teaching time, with classes added in the evenings and on Fridays, which are usually free days,” Kalman writes.

Meanwhile, in Canada, a mediator who was brought in at the request of striking professors at St. Thomas University has recommended that they take the university’s pre-lockout salary offer, Macleans reports. Read more.