Strike-struck Israel paralyzed
Israel, Local, 12/3/1997

Life came to near-total paralysis in Israel Wednesday as some 700,000 workers from the public and governmental sectors went on strike, which was not originally expected until next week but was prompted by statements attributed to Israeli minister of finance, Ya'acov Ne'man, who said workers in Israel were bombs that ³explode and don¹t only tick.²

Despite Ne'man's apology on Tuesday, Israel's national union of workers, headed by Amir Peretz decided to move forward the strike. The strike is ostensibly about the finance ministry¹s unwillingness to honor agreements signed between the Histadrut and the previous government.

The debate between the Histadrut, Israel's national union of workers, and the Israeli government has been going on for months but Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu claimed he had no idea of why the strike was declared. Speaking during a tour to the Bedouin areas in the Naqab desert south of Israel on Tuesday, Netanyahu said: ³I don't know what the Histadrut is striking about.²

Among those on strike were government employees and workers of state-run companies like El Al, the air and sea ports, and train service. In schools, all non-teachers went on strike like secretaries, janitors and kindergarten assistants. The public and government hospitals and all the hospitals in Jerusalem functioned on an emergency basis only. The nurses, administrators and housekeeping staff of all the hospitals joined the strike but the doctors did not. The government ministries, the officials at the local councils, the employees of the post office, the oil refineries, the Bank of Israel, the banks and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange were all on strike as well as workers at Bezeq, the state-run communications company. Workers at the electricity company functioned only on a limited, weekend, extent.

The Histadrut is demanding that the finance ministry agree to honor in full the pension agreement that was signed with the previous Labor government, not to touch the workers¹ special funding for professional workshops, to discuss plans to privatize government companies with them and to honor in full the wages agreement.

Ministry officials, however, leveled severe criticism against the measures taken by Peretz and claimed they constituted the disregard of a court order prohibiting the workers from striking until the debate in the Labor Court is conducted Wednesday morning.

Previous Stories:
  Bedouins in Israel: victims of ongoing discrimination   (11/28/1997)
  Israel's arms industry produces environmentally-clean weapons, lead-free shells   (11/19/1997)

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