Petition: Israel Police used to help Jewish employers break strikes in West Bank
Petition alleges that Jewish employers are using the police to intimidate Arab workers trying to unionize. By Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 15.9.14
15/09/2014
Petition alleges that Jewish employers are using the police to intimidate Arab workers trying to unionize. By Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 15.9.14
WAC-MAAN National Director Assaf Adiv to Att. Shlomo Yitzhaki, Commissioner of Labour Relations, Israel Ministry of Economy
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.
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.
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.
Israeli employers, Palestinian workers and an Arab-Jewish union: Workers at Salit Quarries demand basic, fair employment terms, but the quarry management says their claims are childish. The first organized labor dispute in the West Bank is coming to a head – is this ideological adventurism or a revolutionary precedent?
On June 16, 35 Palestinian workers at Salit Quarries in Mishor Adumim (a settlement area east of Jerusalem) began a general strike. The workers, organized with the independent Union WAC-Ma’an, are demanding an end to exploitation and humiliation, and insist on signing a first collective agreement. The strike began after the workers and the union approved a draft agreement, while the management tried to take advantage of the opposition of a small number of more privileged workers in order to break the union and avoid the agreement. WAC and the workers demand that the agreement be signed immediately. If the agreement is not signed, the strike will continue.
