It's come to this...
Good evening from JFK airport in New York. I'm on my way home.
Unfortunately, my blog is not allowing me to post pictures right now (if I can add one later I will), or I would post a screen cap I took from the Ben Gurion Airport arrivals website from October 27 (now added). Were I to post it, you would see that the present 'crisis' involving El Al's pilots playing games with the rules goes back a lot longer than the last week or so that it has been in the news. In fact, tomorrow will be my 14th El Al flight of the year, and at least seven of those flights have been an hour or more late. El Al is
last in the world in on-time flight performance, and no, it's
not because of security.
So it's come to this....
In light of the situation, El Al has announced a temporary change of
policy, and will allow customers to cancel tickets for a full refund
without incurring a penalty. The change will be in effect on all El Al
flights scheduled through November 30, and will also allow passengers
to reschedule flights free of charge.
Seven El Al officials
resigned in recent days because of the crisis, including the chief
pilot, Ido Sharon, and the fleet managers and chief pilots of a number
of El Al fleets, Channel 2 reported on Sunday night.
Sources close to El Al management revealed to The Jerusalem Post
that a solution to the crisis is not expected soon, unless there is an
intervention by a third party, such as the government, the labor
courts or even the Histadrut labor federation.
MK Eitan Cabel,
chairman of the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee, dubbed the
goings-on “a crisis” on Sunday, and will convene an emergency session
of the committee on Thursday. Cabel announced that he will be meeting
the representatives of the pilots and the management, separately,
before the committee meets.
Meanwhile, both sides remain adamant in their positions and continue playing a blame game while fighting for public opinion.
“Unfortunately,
El Al pilots are continuing their outrageous behavior. Seventeen
captains and 16 first officers refused to man a flight, causing damage
to the company, clients and fellow El Al employees,” an El Al
representative said on Sunday.
The El Al pilots committee, on
the other hand, lays the full blame on the management and denies the
allegations against the pilots. In a statement issued by the committee
on Sunday, the committee said, “[El Al] management is harming hundreds
of passengers tonight. Flights were canceled despite there actually
being enough pilots ready and available to man them.”
Indeed the
pilots are available to fly, but pilots are only willing to man
flights in one direction and demand being flown back in business class.
The
common practice in El Al, and indeed in every major airline, is for
pilots to fly the aircraft in both directions. If pilots are only
willing to work on one direction, it means El Al has to dispatch two
crews with every flight, paying double the number of work hours as well
as for the non-working crew’s business class fares.
Until last
week, El Al management begrudgingly accepted this practice in order to
keep things running smoothly. Eventually, however, with no resolution
to the dispute in sight, the airline decided to take a harder line.
The article goes on to say that the pilots work 75-85 hours per month. For which they are
well-paid.
In documents submitted to the Tel Aviv Regional Labor Court last week,
it was revealed that the average El Al flight captain’s monthly salary
was NIS 96,756, with the average pilot’s salary being NIS 94,832. Both
had seen constituted increases compared with the previous year.
The
wage increases came with an increase in work hours as well, going up
to an average of 81 hours a month as of June 2016, compared with 74 as
of December 2016.
Note that's an
average wage. At an exchange rate of NIS 3.80 or so to the dollar.... you can do the math. It's a heck of lot more than most Israelis make - many multiples.
On other airlines, pilots fly the aircraft in both directions. But they work in both directions. Not El Al.
Grrr.
Labels: El Al, Histadrut, Labor court
The real threat to democracy
In a piece that's behind JPost's paywall, but which I received by email, Evelyn Gordon reports that Israel really does have a dictator and that his name is not Netanyahu or Beinish or Grunis. It's the attorney general,
Yehuda Weinstein.
After
years of dismissing leftists’ hyperbolic claims that Israeli democracy
is under threat, I’ve decided they may be right after all. What they’re
wrong about is the source of the threat. It isn’t our “anti-democratic”
elected representatives (whose “anti-democratic” bills usually aren’t
anything of the sort, while the few that are routinely fail); rather,
it’s our unelected legal establishment.
After all, citizens
elect governments primarily to implement specified policies. Thus if
unelected legal officials routinely prevent governments from doing so,
even on the most important issues of the day, what’s the point of having
elections? And as two incidents of the past two weeks make clear,
that’s increasingly becoming the case.
The first was the National Labor Court’s shocking ruling
on July 30 ordering the government to freeze two tenders for
constructing private ports and instead negotiate with the port unions
for permission – thereby potentially killing the most important reform
on the government’s economic agenda.
A 2009 study
by the Antitrust Authority found that Israel’s ports are 30% less
efficient than similar-sized ports elsewhere, costing the economy some
NIS 5 billion a year. The 2011 Trajtenberg Committee on socioeconomic
reform similarly concluded
that “inferior service and low production in Israel's ports cost the
economy, which depends heavily on the ports, hundreds of millions of
shekels a year. This is before taking into consideration the indirect
damage, stemming from the business uncertainty imposed on the economy by
the disruptions [in the ports' work] and delays in developing new port
infrastructures.”
Nobody disputes that the ports’ inefficiency
and high costs stem primarily from their monopoly status. This enables
their unions to extort excess wages
(the average dockworker earns 2.5 times the economy’s average wage),
dictate outrageous perks such as paying “on-call” port pilots full salary to sit at home and do nothing, and shut down the ports on any trivial pretext, including demands for additional meal vouchers, a desire to dictate the identity of the port CEO’s personal assistant, or even a union member’s wedding.
Nor does anyone dispute that numerous past attempts to bribe the unions
into better behavior have produced nothing but higher government wage
bills.
Consequently, the government concluded that the only
solution is to introduce competition by building new, private ports that
the existing unions won’t control. This has become a top priority for
three senior ministers: Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, Economy
and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett and Finance Minister Yair Lapid.
Moreover, it’s clearly within the government’s prerogative: On what
conceivable grounds should the government need the unions’ permission to
build a new port, or any other vital bit of public infrastructure?
After all, it’s the government – not the unions – that’s responsible for
meeting the country’s infrastructure needs, and for coming up with the
necessary funds.
But the labor court thought otherwise: It
ordered the government to negotiate with the Histadrut labor federation.
And that decision, if not overturned (Katz vowed to appeal to the
Supreme Court), will sound the death knell for the government’s flagship
economic policy. Even if the court’s interference doesn’t scare off the
eight foreign companies that have expressed interest in the tenders,
the new ports will be pointless if they require the Histadrut’s consent.
The labor federation has already said it will agree only if these
ports, too, are under the unions’ thumb.
The second incident was
Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein’s equally shocking ruling last week
ordering the Knesset to finish enacting new legislation on drafting
Haredim by August 20. This legislation, which passed its first Knesset
reading only on July 23, is one of the most important bills the current
parliament is likely to consider. A good law could spur Haredi
integration into the army and workforce; a bad one could set this goal
back decades.
Consequently, the committee charged with preparing
the bill scheduled multiple hearings at which outside experts and
interested parties could present arguments pro and con and propose
changes. Moreover, several MKs are demanding major revisions – which in
fact are sorely needed, as David Weinberg aptly explained
in this paper last week. But Weinstein’s ruling, by allotting a mere
four weeks for these discussions, would make this impossible. Knesset
committees typically spend months on major legislation when it requires
significant changes; bills can be rushed through only when they’re left
virtually unchanged.
To his credit, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein bluntly told Weinstein
that parliament’s legislative timetable is none of his business.
Indeed, as Edelstein’s letter correctly noted, the Knesset would be
neglecting its duty if it didn’t give such an important bill thorough
consideration: “The job of the Knesset and its committees is to examine
bills the government submits, hold a public discussion and listen to the
people involved in the matter, including those the government did not
hear, and use its judgment.”
But given the Supreme Court’s long-standing position
that the attorney general’s legal opinions are binding on the
executive, Weinstein has enormous power to extort Knesset compliance by
pressuring the executive even if he lacks the power to dictate directly
to parliament (which, incidentally, isn’t guaranteed; the court has
never fully addressed this issue). In this case, for instance, existing
law technically mandates drafting some 60,000 Haredim immediately. The
government deemed this untenable, so the defense minister issued
deferrals until the new law (which ostensibly stipulates a gradual
phase-in) passes. But court petitions have been filed against these
deferrals. Hence Weinstein could simply threaten to issue a legal
opinion backing the petitioners unless the Knesset meets his legislative
timetable.
Thus we have a labor court seeking to stymie one of
the government’s flagship reforms, and an attorney general seeking to
prevent MKs from influencing one of the term’s flagship pieces of
legislation. And in both cases, they may yet succeed.
Under these
circumstances, why should citizens even bother voting? And why should
anyone with a desire to effect change want to run for office? After all,
you don’t need any kind of elected government – much less one staffed
by talented people with good ideas – merely to rubber-stamp the whims of
unelected legal officials. For that, an automatic stamping machine
would suffice.
Indeed.
Labels: Ashdod port, Haifa port, Haredim, IDF, Israeli democracy, Israeli Knesset, Labor court, Yehuda Weinstein
Grocery chain ordered to rehire violent Arabs
The Kimat Chinam (Almost Free) grocery chain has been ordered to rehire 21 Arab workers who were laid off for
allegedly violent behavior, including sexual harassment.
Store managers at the Kimat Chinam branch in Modiin said the Arab workers in question created an atmosphere of violence and intimidation, threatened customers and fellow workers with physical violence, and were involved in sexual harassment in the workplace.
Some of the workers even bragged that they were involved in the murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar, and did so in the presence of Jewish workers and customers, management said.
They denied that the firings were motivated by the workers' ethnic background. Six Arab workers remain at the store in question, and almost 25% of workers at the Kimat Chinam network are Arab, they said, “So we cannot be considered a company that discriminates between its workers.”
...
However, the workers told a different story. Workers said they were discriminated against by the manager, and had been fired with no warning, without a chance to tell their side of the story. All Arab workers at the Modiin branch were fired, they claimed, including some who had worked at the store prior to the appointment of the most recent manager, who had not had any complaints about them.
When God forbid someone gets murdered in that grocery store, who will take the blame?
Labels: Arab culture, Kimat Chinam, Labor court
