Yair Lapid had hardly settled into his Knesset seat before the Finance Ministry declared war on the ultra-Orthodox, on the Histadrut, on the monopolies – in short, a world war. What the father Tommy began with Netanyahu in 2003, the…
Tag: privatization
You want a welfare state? It’s not about nostalgia, it’s about class struggle
A review of The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State by Asbjorn Wahl. Pluto Press, 2011. Since the hot summer of protests in Israel everyone here has been talking about the Welfare State, Scandinavian style. The Rise and Fall of the Welfare…
The Social Workers’ Strike: A Setback with Important Lessons
The social workers’ strike ended in disappointment. (See Background article.) After the momentum gathered by thousands of social workers who took to the streets for 23 days, there is the feeling of a squandered opportunity. The agreement forced upon them by…
Social workers’ strike: confronting a privatized state
Sunday March 20 marked an important event in the history of trade unionism in Israel. The leadership assembly of the Social Workers’ Union (SWU), which organizes some 10,000 public sector social workers, rejected the Histadrut’s offer to sign a collective…
Politics at the Workers’ Expense
Histadrut Chairman Ofer Eini is trying to deceive us all. On Nov. 2 he signed a two-year wage agreement and canceled a general strike, thus supporting the Netanyahu-Barak coalition in a very tangible way. The following day he came out…
Post Zionist Israel: The Rules Have Changed
Adapted from a paper discussed at the annual seminar of the Organization for Democratic Action, October 2007 DURING the past thirty years, but especially in the last decade, Israel has undergone major economic change. Ownership of the economy has shifted…