The Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel) announced today that it will be convening on Wednesday to approve the date for commencing a general strike in the public sector. This latest move follows the breakdown of talks between the Ministry of Finance and the Histadrut on a salary hike for public sector employees. The talks are deadlocked and at present there seems no likelihood that the sides will reach any agreement.
The Histadrut claims that the public sector has been working without a framework salary agreement for three years and this is reflected in an erosion of the salaries of 1 million pblic sector employees.
Histadrut chairman Avi Nissenkorn declared a work dispute three weeks ago throughout the public sector because of the failure of salary talks.
Any strike action will likely include government employees, IDF civilian employees, teachers including the high school teachers union, nurses and auxiliary staff, social workers, and local authority employees. More meetings will be held before Wednesday in efforts to avert strike action.
Nissenkorn said, "At the moment 25% of employees in Israel earn a minimum salary and 50% don't even reach the income tax threshold - it's a bad situation and that's the way things also look in public services. Salaries in Israel are too low and that's one of the main reasons for the difficult figures that we saw in the recent poverty report. We've had enough of empty slogans and closing our eyes to the situation, and workers cannot make ends meet. Salaries must be raised immediately and that's an imperative."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 13, 2015
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