Strike over wages plagues Tel Aviv University as well

Some 300 adjunct lecturers at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo went on strike this week to protest their employment conditions. 

This is the first time Israeli non-tenured collegiate lecturers have done so.

Adjuncts are hired by colleges on short-term semester- or academic year-long contracts and rehired as needed. Most have part-time positions.

They do not receive raises based on experience; benefits, like educational training funding, or certain forms of vacation pay above the legal minimum.

Like other contract workers, they have no employment security.

About two-thirds of the faculty members at Israel’s 20 public colleges are employed as adjunct, external lecturers, a July 2013 report by the Israeli parliament. 

From 2002 to 2012, a decade in which colleges grew rapidly at the expense of research universities, the number of such faculty grew by 112 percent, much faster than any other group of faculty.

The union declared a strike after negotiating with the college’s administration for the past eight months without making any real progress, say Lahav-Raz and Arev.

Handmade signs now hang all over campus, saying simply, "Strike".