The Fight for our right part 2 - meeting with TRFO on 25.01.23

Today we met the representatives of Teaching and Research Faculty Organization, the body in the university that represents the scholars, meaning everyone who is receiving a scholarship and they are not employed by the university.

The core issue was about the scholarship amounts vs the increase cost of life (CPI). Here below we report their email:

Prices are rising - raise the scholarships!

The semester is already ending and the university administration still hasn’t raised scholarships according to the consumer price index (CPI) (almost 5%), in violation of its agreement with the Teaching and Research Faculty Organization from 2009.

What does this mean for us? That the university owes each scholar between 330 and 3150 NIS for the semester (depending on scholarship percentage and research stage)! Meanwhile, the cost of living is rising!

As a result of our advocacy over the past weeks, the administration is finally addressing the issue: the president of the university told us that our concerns will be taken care of and that a decision regarding scholarship amounts will be made as soon as possible. However, we were just told that the administration is again postponing the decision.

For us, the situation is clear: the university administration made an agreement which it must respect, and therefore must raise scholarships immediately according to the CPI! We are thousands of research students on scholarship, and without us, the university cannot carry out research. We deserve to make a decent living!

We tried to get as much information as we could, and here there is a summary of the points debated.

DISCLAIMER: this information has been collected and transcribed, does not come directly from any formal written document from TFRO. Apologies if something is not correct. We are always acting trying to do our best. 

• Given the rise in CPI, the PhD students will receive in April a one-time bonus of 3%; the post-docs will receive an increase of 5% starting from the next academic year, although the post-docs are not linked to the academic calendar. PhD scholarship will be recalculated in October as well. This 5% will be implemented for sure on the part that the faculty covers, and facultatively on the part that PI covers. The TFRO expects the PIs to follow this direction.

• There are general rules about the scholarship of any scholar:
• The amount depends on the Faculty, the PI and the level of experience of the scholar, but these are not directly related.
• The base for the PhD is 50%, the one for Post-Doc is 100%. The international Post-Doc have instead a base of 150%.
• The levels of experience are 1 for the MSc students, 2 for PhD students, 5 for Post-Doc.
• The PI can increase the Post-Doc Scholarship to 200% and up to 250% with a special permission of the rector of the university.
• The PI can increase the PhD Scholarship up to 150% and in some cases up to 175%.
• We were told that there are some cases of discrepancy also inside the same research group, where at the same level of experience, two people can have different scholarships.
• The statements are general and there is lack of transparency from the university in certain contexts, so it is not possible to check on some information.

• We were granted that these rules apply either for the Israeli and the foreigner students. The university instead discriminates between employees and non-employees.

• The Post-Docs scholarships are not competitive enough because:
• The amount has not been adjusted for many year and the university does not see it as a priority.
• There is no a real representation of Post-Doc work rights and the agreements that the university has are ambiguous and not really implemented.
• In order to re-adjust the scholarship, it is possible to try to get the PI to contact the TFRO and check the terms with them.

• The Post-Doc issue:
• Post-Docs sit in a grey zone: legally speaking, they are not considered neither students nor employees.
• This means that they are recognized as students by the Immigration Ministry (therefore not allowed to work) as their participation in the University as employees would be more expensive and laborious, so it is more practical to hire them as "students". 
• Their scholarship can vary according to the specific condition of their work environment.
• As they receive a scholarship, they don't pay taxes on it. But as they are not considered students, they can't access the ancillary services (paid by taxes) on the security and the welfare. 
• They don't have any official Labor Union reference as they are not considered employees, therefore they are protected by the TRFO.

• The TA(Teaching assistant) issue:
• Virtually, every Scholar is entitled to TA activity. De facto, their service should be needed by the faculty: it means that it depends on a given faculty looking for personnel and on the preferred language. English-taught courses are a few.
• TA activity is considered a job, for which one needs a special student visa or a working visa. In this case, the PI and the University help the scholar to obtain it.
• TA activity is therefore subjected to taxation (rumors say 10%, the TFRO did not have an answer on this)
• The Scholars enrolled in TA activity have some year budget (up to 3000$) for items and travels.
• As an outcome of the TFRO battle, TA from ANY faculty are paid the same amount of money per hour. This means that different salaries are due to the number of hours spent teaching.

• For more information on the ancillary taxes, one should contact the Student Union.
• Here there is the link on the policy of these services: https://english.tau.ac.il/breakdown_tuition_ancillary.