Bishvil zeh yesh Histadrut (for this, there are unions)
Good luck if you're trying to enter or leave Israel today. There's an election for head of the Histadrut (our national trade union - think of a combination of the AFL-CIO, the teamsters and the mob and you'll have the Histadrut) next month and the chairman, pictured above, wants to prove to his membership how much he's doing for them.The Labor court allowed the Histadrut to strike today, provided that they only shut down Ben Gurion Airport from 6:00 am until Noon. Presumably, the airport operated all night to accommodate, and good luck to anyone who couldn't get out or who was supposed to land.
The supposed issue of this strike is 'contract workers,' which have proliferated greatly over the last several years, including within the government itself. It is almost impossible to fire anyone in this country, especially in the public sector (start with an automatic lump sum payment of one month's salary for every year you've been employed, and continue with unemployment benefits in which the employer has to participate that equal your working salary - leaving no incentive to go back to work before they run out), so businesses have taken to hiring employees by virtue of a contract so that they they are not legally employed and therefore don't have to be paid any benefits.
In order to be populists, the Histadrut has focused on the cleaning people, who are generally hired by temp agencies - they want the government to hire them.
For those of you stuck in it, there is a list of affected services here and a summary of the issues here.
But here's the key to understand strikes here: There are no strike votes. When the Histadrut decides to strike, they strike. The workers have no say. (When I worked in the government, our agency NEVER went on strike. We came to work no matter what the Histadrut did, on principle).
Labels: general strike, Histadrut
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:52 AM
2 Comments:
I think many of our union problems are very in parallel with Italy's.
At least we don't have the equivalent of the Red Brigades bumping off our economists. :)
Where they may actually need unions is somewhere getting going, like China. Unions are a roadblock to excellence once labor regulations are in place and enforced. In the U.S., being an independent contractor is a way to be able to work, when the unions have the market tied up (not in the union, ineligible for the position). Also, being an independent contractor allows a parent to move in and out of the workforce, control the schedule a little, have portable health insurance, etc. The Chambers of Commerce used to work as an umbrella for tiny businesses and sole proprietorships to negotiate group health insurance rates. But they quit doing it. Free the Workers!
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