Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel) chairman Avi Nissenkorn said in an interview with Reshet Bet radio today that "it seems there is no avoiding a general strike that will start this week." Nissenkorn added that the talks with the Ministry of Finance had so far proved fruitless, and that "the gaps are very wide."
"Globes" reported yesterday that no progress had been made in negotiations on a new labor agreement in the public sector, because of Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon's insistence that any pay rise should have a differential component that will reduce wage gaps between salaried workers.
Yesterday evening, a three-hour meeting between the director general of the Ministry of Finance and his team and the heads of the Histadrut and trades unions ended without result. Further meetings have been set for today, against a background of threats by the Histadrut to call a strike in the coming days.
The new wage agreement for workers in the public sector will apply to 2013-2018, including pay increases retroactive to the day on which the agreement takes effect, plus one-time compensation for the delay in the salary hike. In the preceding wage agreement, the workers received a 6.25% raise spread over the 3.5 years of the agreement, and NIS 2,000 in one-time compensation for each worker.
The Ministry of Finance is demanding that the across-the-board wage rise should be uniform in shekel terms rather than in percentage terms, so that workers who earn NIS 5,000 and NIS 20,000 monthly will, for the purposes of illustration, both receive an additional NIS 500 per month, in contrast to the percentage wage increases given in the past.
In addition to the disagreement over the principle of a differential wage increase, there is also a "wide gap", as the Ministry of Finance describes it, between the sides on the size of the increase. The Histadrut is demanding an annual wage increase of 2.2%, or 11% over the period of the agreement.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 21, 2015
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