The Workers Advice Center (WAC-MAAN), which seeks justice for all, sees the courageous struggle of the African asylum seekers as an exemplary civic struggle and does all it can to assist, and believes theirs is an important battle in the fight against racism and discrimination.
On Sunday, 3 Nov. 2013, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) in Jerusalem will directly employ 13 workers who had been employed for years via a manpower company.
July 17, 2013: The Independent Trade Union Centre WAC-MAAN today signed a factory-wide collective agreement with Jana Beverages, located in the industrial zone of Nazareth Illit, Northern Israel.
Following the workers at the Salit Quarry and Levi Metal & Wood, a third group of Palestinians employed by Israeli companies in the occupied West Bank is organizing with the Independent Trade Union Centre WAC-MAAN.
On April 21 the Israeli government voted to open Israeli skies to international air traffic, following an agreement with the European Union. This drastic step will bring about the dismissal of thousands of workers. It will open aviation to Israel to companies defined as Low Cost Companies (LCC). These companies, which are under no governmental control, reduce the prices of flights by cutting expenditure on flight safety and in particular by impoverishing employees: it ends in reducing salaries and transferring work to outsourcing firms, thereby eliminating, or significantly reducing, workers’ wages and social benefits.
Binyamin Netanyahu intends to exploit the anti-social-welfare composition of his future coalition, featuring Yair Lapid, to take down organized labor. With the array of forces in the new Knesset, he sees an opportunity to implement the public sector reforms of which he and his cronies have been dreaming for at least a decade.
Two years after having signed a first collective agreement, on 13 February 2013 Maan signed a second collective agreement with the management of the Musrara School of Art, which employs 70 teachers. Maan signed a first collective agreement with the School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem, which employs 25 teachers, in October 2012. In parallel, 180 teachers and technical team personnel from the Minshar School of Art in Tel Aviv formed an association and elected a committee. Negotiations have been taking place over the past two months with Minshar’s management.
The independent trade union WAC-MAAN calls for an end to the war on Gaza, an end to the Israeli occupation, and a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.
The last few days have seen a successful end to a long legal battle over demands to instate excavation workers as regular employees of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). About three years ago, dozens working for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) at the archaeological site of Ras al-Amud near Jerusalem were summoned by a representative of Brik, the personnel firm through which they were employed. He told them that all who had worked for more than nine months would not be hired in the future. Four days later, workers at the Um Tuba site, all Brik employees, were told the same thing. None received a letter of dismissal.
After a strike lasting almost three months, Salit Quarries has ceased operations. The Jerusalem Regional Court has appointed a trustee to manage the quarry for the time being. The quarry owners, who tried to break the strike by every possible means and compel them to continue their work under humiliating conditions, declared that they are facing bankruptcy. The workers, and the Workers Advice Center (WAC-Maan) which represented them, see the end of this stage of the hard struggle in a positive light, and are preparing for the next stage: the struggle to protect the workers’ rights, whether by compensation for dismissal or by employment with the potential new owners. During the period of the strike, WAC-Maan managed to raise a strike fund which granted each worker NIS 1,850.
