industrial action

On Friday July 8, at 9 a.m., a delegation from the quarry management came to the protest tent at the entrance to the Salit Quarries premises, bringing envelopes containing checks for the workers’ June wages. According to Israeli law, monthly wages must be paid by the 9th day of the following month. The quarry management, which for 24 days has refused to negotiate with the Workers Advice Center (WAC-Ma’an), initially gave the impression that it would meet its legal obligations and pay wages in time. Because the workers have been striking since June 16, these wages are from the first part of June. The withholding of wages is liable to result in fines and other penalties for the management.

For 27 years, since Salit Quarries began operating in the occupied West Bank under the ownership of Jews from Jerusalem, it has employed Palestinian workers from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Though quarrying sand and gravel from the desert Mountains just 10 km east of Jerusalem has brought considerable profit to the owners, the workers have been employed under exploitative terms and with insufficient safety standards. Until the workers began organizing with WAC (in May 2007), the West Bank workers were employed without pay slips and without pension insurance. No tests had been carried out to ascertain the affect of the dust on the workers’ health, and there were no facilities such as a dining room, washrooms or water cooler though the quarry is located in an isolated arid region (see story). Following claims and pressure from WAC and the workers, the quarry agreed to some improvements.