The strike goes on

Well, it's still weird at school. 80% of the faculty is in the union that's striking, so faculty meetings are in the single digits, including the principal. Some other schools are worse off. Our main rival school has lost both its top two administrators and nothing much at all is going on there right now.

Consequences:
Written exams: are being cancelled on a day-to-day basis as the strike continues. My physics exam was cancelled yesterday, so the students who spent the last week prepping for it and working with me might as well have been at home playing GTA IV or out enjoying the spectacular Norwegian spring we're having.
Oral exams: these don't start for a while but are very labor-intensive. There's a new system this year with the most recent educational reform, and there already was a great deal of confusion about exam procedures, but now there's the very real possibility that these will also be cancelled. Basically students are selected for an oral exam in another subject than the one they had their written exam in. Teachers find out two weeks in advance which class the examinees will come from and spend that time prepping exam questions and working with another teacher from another school who will be the other examiner during the test. 48 hours in advance everyone finds out which students "come up" in which subjects. Then on exam day the teacher and the "censor" examine the students in 45-minute intervals and set the exam grade based on that. I found out this week that I am to be a censor at another school here in town, but the teacher I am supposed to work with is out on strike, so we can't do anything to prepare until the strike is over. I also haven't heard from my censor, so I presume he or she is also out on strike and unavailable until further notice. So even if the strike gets resolved in, say, a week, the question remains whether we can get the exams together in the remaining time.
Grades: If you "come up" to an exam in a subject, your transcript will reflect both your course grade (based on your work in the class) and your oral or written exam grade. But even the course grades can't be turned in by teachers who are out on strike, and there are pretty firm deadlines for getting grades in nationally. I have heard speculation that we may have to recycle fall semester grades for teachers who are out on strike and let those stand on the transcripts until they can be amended at some later date.

It's all pretty surreal to me, particularly since the offer the union turned down before the strike included a raise of around 6%. I heard we were getting a 6% raise and thought to myself, "Woo-hoo! We're getting a 6% raise!" Apparently, though, others felt differently.

A number of students are naturally happy their exams are being cancelled. The local paper covered the jubilation at the aforementioned rival school when the cancellation of their exams was announced. Still, a lot of kids went through all the exam prep and feel ready to take the test, and some of them are pretty disappointed that they're being denied the chance to prove what they know, particularly those who were hoping to pull up a course grade they weren't satisfied with.