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Majority against teachers' right to strike, study finds

More than 70 percent of people, including teachers, think teachers should not be able to go on strike and are against legislation that would allow them to do so, the results of an opinion poll conducted recently by the Ministry of Education showed yesterday.

Less than 10 percent of respondents agreed that teachers should be thought of as belonging to "labor groups, " which would be entitled to establish their own union, the poll conducted several weeks ago found. The ministry polled adults by telephone who were chosen randomly nationwide between Dec. 24 and Dec. 29 and received 2,025 valid responses.

During the same period, the ministry surveyed the country's teachers from elementary schools as well as junior-high schools via mailed questionnaires and received 1,424 valid replies. Both groups were asked the same questions. The poll found that 87 percent of the public and 78 percent of teachers surveyed agreed that existing teachers' groups should be transformed into professional academic associations that are devoted to upgrading education and improving teaching quality.

A total of 76.8 percent of the public do not agree that teachers should be allowed to go on strike or suspend their teaching work en masse, compared with 46.6 percent of the teachers who also were disinclined to allow teachers to strike. About 32 percent of the teachers responding agreed with the strike notion.
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