Middle East

From the July 2003 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 50, No. 7)

Israel

Solidarity Forever?

Elisa Ben-Rafael
World Press Review correspondent
Jerusalem, Israel

Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv during the Histadrut strike

Women wait for their flight at Tel Aviv's deserted Ben Gurion airport. Some 700,000 members of the Histadrut tade union confederation walked off the job on April 30, 2003 (Photo: Orel Cohen/AFP).

Since early April, when Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced the Sharon government’s austerity budget, the Histadrut (Israel’s state-run federation of labor unions and the country’s second-largest employer) has been up in arms.

Netanyahu’s plan to pare some NIS11 billion (US$2 billion) from the 2003 budget calls for firing thousands of workers, cutting wages, increasing workers’ monthly pension premiums, and raising the retirement age to 67. He has also proposed giving public-sector employers the authority to fire workers without union intervention.

When Netanyahu first proposed his budget and legislative changes in late March, the Histadrut reacted by calling upon workers to institute work sanctions. The sanctions instituted by the Histadrut and implemented by the public workers’ committees at each office took the form of informational sessions on the proposed budget, after which workers sat at their desks without doing their work or providing services to the public.

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On April 8, these sanctions escalated to a full strike that effectively shut down the country—affecting everything from kindergartens to raw materials waiting to be processed through Israel’s Ports and Railways Authority. The Histadrut subsequently called a series of work sanctions and general strikes to protest the government’s fiscal plan and its use of legislation to violate collective wage agreements.

At the beginning of the series of strikes, an editorial in Yediot Aharonot (April 8) discussed the impasse in the negotiations and faulted both sides: “The tactic that Netanyahu chose stems from his combative personality. He appended to the draft budget a warning that if the Histadrut turned him down, he would engineer unprecedented legislation—the legality of which is in doubt—that would void signed agreements and bury the principle of free negotiations between employers and employees....The Histadrut cannot negotiate in the face of nonconventional weapons....[Histadrut Chairman and Member of Knesset] Amir Peretz’s two contributions to the crisis are the refusal to internalize the urgency of saving the economy and his failure to fashion a logical alternative to the draft budget.”

However, when in mid-April Histadrut suspended the strike and reverted to sanctions so that workers could collect their Passover holiday pay packets, two-weeks’ vacation pay, and holiday bonuses, the unions began losing popular support. By early May, when the general strike resumed after the holiday, only 32 percent of the public supported it, while 53 percent opposed it.

In an analysis for Ha’aretz (May 3), Nehemia Strasler observed,“One possible reason for this result is the structure of the economy. The private business sector makes up two-thirds of the economy, while just a third is in public hands.”

If that were the explanation, however, it is difficult to explain why 52 percent of the general public opposes the government’s austerity plan. Strasler concluded: “It is good that we live in a representative democracy where the public puts the power in the hands of the government and the treasury, since if it were left up to referenda, nothing would ever get done and the economy would sink into even further disarray.”

In its April 9 editorial, Hatzofeh’s editors praised the National Religious Party for opposing Netanyahu’s economic plan because they believed that it would “lead to the collapse of important Zionist educational institutions.” In its May 5 editorial, the paper’s editors referred to the general strikes and accused Histadrut Chairman Peretz of failing to harness the widespread opposition to the government’s economic plan.

The Jerusalem Post, openly supportive of Netanyahu, has run lengthy features lauding the financial plan and carried exclusive interviews with Netanyahu since the beginning of the crisis. In a May 6 interview, Netanyahu is quoted as saying: “I think we are in an economic turnaround. It’s not happening in terms of growth, but in terms of expectations towards growth.…I think that people see hope on the horizon…as our plan is meant to save the economy and grow the economy by allowing free enterprise to prosper, by cutting down taxation, and by investments in infrastructures and privatization.”

Most Israelis, however, do not read the English-language Jerusalem Post and were thus unaware of what the finance minister has been saying for consumption by foreign-investment audiences.

Globes reported May 14 that Prime Minister Sharon reiterated his full support for Netanyahu’s plan and lashed out at the renewed strike, condemning the Histadrut’s “unprecedented insolence and arrogance.” The next day, Globes reported that Netanyahu escalated his rhetoric, warning that “the era when seven workers committees can paralyze the country is over.”

Despite continuing negotiations, the two sides were at a stalemate at press time. Ma’ariv (May 16) declared on its front page: “Strike worsens. Netanyahu threatens to pass legislation that will outlaw strikes.”

The paper reported that Netanyahu warned, “These are the last big strikes. It won’t be possible to close down the nation again. Behind the threat there is a new proposed law.” After MK Ruhama Avraham (Likud), Netanyahu’s personal secretary during his tenure as prime minister, introduced a bill to forbid all strikes in the future, Histadrut’s spokesman reacted strongly to Avraham’s bill, saying that it would “cancel democracy.”

In his commentary for Yediot Aharonot on the same day, Sever Plotzker wrote: “Netanyahu’s words carry the ring of Peronism. Peretz and his people are sure that Netanyahu and his people are threatening to take away the heart of the social benefits of the workers of Israel. Netanyahu is convinced that Peretz and his committees are endangering the modernization of the Israeli economy.

“It is difficult to imagine two people more different than Netanyahu and Peretz. The one [Netanyahu], son of an established Ashkenazi Jerusalem family, the elite of the elite; the other, son of a poor Moroccan family from a development town, the second class of the second class of Israel. It would seem that they loathe each other. Mr. Netanyahu is looking to fight with his friend Peretz in public. The fight has public pay-offs for him. Netanyahu’s popularity increases as long as he screams out in anger and controls the microphones....The resistance of the social lobby against the Finance Ministry’s austerity plan is melting—Netanyahu is winning.”

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