The Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel) is scrupulously signaling business as usual, and saying that there is no point in attributing any special importance to reports about various plans to harm working conditions in the public sector, or of workers in the economy in general. It says that the Ministry of Finance officials are leaking old contingency plans, not Minister of Finance Yair Lapid.
As is his wont, Histadrut chairman Ofer Eini is not making any personal attacks against Lapid, so long as he believes that he has enough time and maneuvering room to nip any measures in the bud. But if Lapid replaces his Facebook stories about Moses with clear and direct statements about adopting any of the ministry's plans, he will become a target.
Eini is ready to repel attacks from any direction and for every scenario. He believes that the political arena is more complex than it appears, and that Lapid's messianic messages and Naftali Bennett's call to arms ("We will remove barriers with a knife between our teeth.") will not withstand the workers. Eini takes care to state that the power of the Histadrut is neither in the political arena, nor with the so-called "powerful workers committees", but comes from the workers themselves. The wave of unionization which has been sweeping the country in the past few years should signal that something has changed; that workers are no longer willing to lend money to the state. They are not willing to be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ATM, in Lapid's own words.
Eini still insists on not handing over even one shekel of the workers' money, not freezing the final 1% pay hike for public sector employees, no taxes on advanced training funds, and not even half of the annual vacation bonus he agreed to give in 2009. Water costs more in 2013, prices at the supermarkets are up, and what was true then is no longer the case now.
Nonetheless, anyone familiar with Eini's sophisticated mind can already assess his proposal to enable everyone to back down. He will remind Lapid that the industrial quiet under the last public sector salary agreement expired in January 2013, and that the Histadrut and the Ministry of Finance are due to negotiation a new agreement now. In other words, not only does the Histadrut not have to accept the freezing of the previous agreement, it can demand more pay hikes. At this point, Eini may offer, completely legally of course, and out of a sense of "deep responsibility to the country's economy" to postpone discussion on a new salary agreement by one year. In this way, the Ministry of Finance can present an achievement without seeing a shekel from the workers. For his part, Eini, Moses can become Samson, at least in his own eyes.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 28, 2013
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