IN JULY 2007 the Histadrut (Israel’s General Federation of Labor) reached a pension agreement with the Coordinating Office of Economic Organizations.1 “A historic accord!” said the signers. For the first time in Israel, the unorganized working poor would have a pension…
Category: Labor
Wisconsin II: Cosmetic Changes but still No Jobs
IN JULY 2007, the Knesset gave final approval to a law that will replace the Wisconsin pilot, which was called Mehalev (“From the Heart,” an acronym based on a Hebrew phrase meaning, “From Income Maintenance to Becoming Part of the…
Palestinian Quarry Workers Organize
THE SAL’IT QUARRY lies in the desert north of the West Bank settlement of Maaleh Adumim, a bedroom suburb of Jerusalem. Its workers have decided to break through the Fear Barrier and wage a struggle for their rights. There are…
Thailand and the Israeli Labor Market
A Journey through Israel’s Agricultural Sector IN THE LAST WEEK of April 2007, the Workers Advice Center (WAC-Ma’an) hosted a delegation of European and American labor unions, which it had invited to study exclusion and exploitation in Israel’s agricultural sector.…
Flexible, All Too Flexible
AS CHANGE SWEEPS through global job markets, a debate is underway about the effect on workers. Are they benefiting? Or is work becoming less secure, with lower wages and the loss of hard-won rights? At the heart of the debate…
The Wisconsin Bluff
Since August 2005, the Wisconsin Plan has been implemented on a trial basis in Israel. It is known here as Mehalev: “From the Heart.” The idea is to shift the unemployed from welfare to “workfare” by means of private placement…