Let’s say it loud and clear, despite the uneasy feeling and the risk of stones being thrown at the house and imprecations being yelled down the telephone: contract workers should not become permanent employees in the public service. On the contrary: large numbers of permanent employees in government and public services should become contract workers.
This is on condition that, beforehand, under an industry collective agreement or by legislation, the government, together with the Histadrut and the private sector, carry out real, radical reform in the employment conditions of all those employed by the manpower companies. A clear, sharp, well-defined law accompanied by full funding for sophisticated monitoring and criminal and financial enforcement in real time, extending to the private sector too.
The right thing is to reach a situation in which, on the one hand, there is an end to the gay and wasteful days of tenure for a large proportion of the heavy public bureaucracy, which throttles the economy and imposes a heavy burden on the public, and, on the other hand, it will pay to be a non-tenured worker. The side effects will be greater efficiency, lower taxes, much less bureaucracy, no need for go-betweens, better service to the citizen, enhanced ability to do business, no more to-ing and fro-ing to obtain signatures from 50 clerks of one kind or another.
450,000 men and women are employed in what is known as the “public service” - government, government companies and corporations, local authorities, the police, the prison service, education, health. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, which includes under “public services’ those employed by non-profit organizations in welfare, health, education, and geriatric care, the figure is 900,000.
Beyond the fact that we are talking about overblown and extremely expensive organizations, everyone is entitled to dignified and fair working conditions. By the same token, everyone is obliged to work in a fair manner and to respect the public they serve and which finances them. At present, it’s not like that, and it’s fair to say that it’s not like that because these workers are answerable to nobody. As soon as there’s tenure, for much of officialdom, work is over.
The trade unions protect, and the Histadrut preserves, even those, in fact especially those, who don’t work, who get in the way, who do damage, and who do not serve the public.
Hiistadrut chairman Ofer Eini is stuck up a high tree. He is using the weakest workers in the economy to rescue himself from the low rank he has reached in public consciousness.
Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz, with an ostentatious State Comptroller at his back who likes to throw his weight around, and election pressures and a populist mood in his party on all sides, is fighting a just and frustrating war. All the same, he must construct a ladder for Eini to climb down. Steinitz must enhance the Ministry of Finance’s proposal, to make it more like the northern European model, and he must allow Eini the glory of signing a fair and generous collective agreement for the cleaning workers, and he must also implement and finance it.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 8, 2012
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2012