Israel's Public Sector Saw More Strikes but Fewer Lost Workdays in 2025

A report from Israel's Ministry of Finance reveals a complex picture of labor relations in the public sector for 2025. While the total number of lost workdays decreased by approximately 38% compared to 2024, falling from over 58,000 to around 36,000, the number of full strikes more than quadrupled, rising from three to eleven. This apparent contradiction is explained by the significantly shorter duration of most strikes in 2025.

Five of the eleven strikes lasted only a few hours, and five more lasted a single workday. Only one strike, by border control officers in April, extended to two days. This trend resulted in a drastic reduction in average lost workdays per striking employee, from 7.3 days in 2024 to about one-third of a day in 2025. The report attributes this to a government measure enacted in February 2023, which allowed for alternative dispute resolutions, leading to shorter, more symbolic labor actions.

A significant outlier distorted the overall figures: a two-hour warning strike by the Teachers' Union in May 2025, which, due to its scale, accounted for 83% of all lost workdays that year, totaling 30,000 days. Without this single event, total lost workdays would have been just over 6,000, involving only about 2,000 employees.

The report also highlights a phenomenon termed "the onset" (התחלוּת), where thousands of education workers submitted sick notes, leading to the closure of 1,635 kindergartens on a single day in May. The Ministry of Finance argued this was an organized action, not genuine illness, and pursued legal action. A labor court ruled that collective, inauthentic sick note submissions constitute an illegal strike, though the final settlement was based on agreements rather than a definitive legal precedent.

Internationally, Israel's lost workdays per 1,000 employees, estimated at 55.6 in 2025, appear lower than in previous decades, though the report cautions that international comparisons require careful consideration of differing methodologies and scope. The Ministry of Finance expressed concern about the difficulty in managing strikes, particularly partial ones, and the lack of effective deterrents against organized actions disguised as legitimate absences.