The Haifa Labor Court today scheduled a hearing on Haifa Chemicals' summons to its employees to a pre-layoff hearing. Until the hearing, the court, presided over by Judge Alexander Kogan, ordered the company's management to refrain from taking any measures towards laying off its employees.
The court ruling came at the request of Koah LaOvdim, the organization representing the workers of Haifa Chemicals in northern Israel, represented by Advocates Eli Nidam and Sigal Pail.
"What we have here is an employer using hundreds of tenured and organized workers employed in its service, and who depend on it for their livelihood, cynically, vengefully, and in bad faith," the petition to the court read.
Workers' committee chairman Eli Elbaz said, "The court has addressed our argument that these layoffs are illegal throughout. This is of course a temporary achievement, and we are preparing for a long-term struggle."
The workers demonstrated today in front of the plant in Haifa, preventing the entry of contract workers hired by the company's management to replace the workers in duties remaining before the plant is closed. The pre-layoff hearings were scheduled to take place today, but did not take place, because the entry of the workers for the hearings was prevented.
"Management, which refused to find solutions to the ammonia crisis for four years, is determined to do damage to the workers in the north," Koah LaOvdim stated.
"Globes" reported last Friday that the letters summoning workers to the pre-layoff hearings scheduled for today had been delivered by unorthodox means: messengers on motorcycles stuck them on the doors of the workers' homes, according to the Haifa Chemicals workers' committee. In the town of Isfiya, the company even founded a Whatsapp group for workers living there, in which the workers were called on to collected the letters from their place of employment.
The workers absolutely refused to accept the notice of layoffs in all the ways tried by the company. A source close to the company's management said that sticking the letters to the doors of the workers' homes was the company's only remaining legal option. The workers' committee instructed the workers not to attend the event organized by the company's management a months ago in order to inform them of the plant being closed down, and not to attend the clarification talks with management.
Haifa Chemicals said today, "After five months in which Haifa Chemicals was shut down and had no revenue, but scrupulously paid salaries to its employees, the government decided on a solution for supplying ammonia to the fertilizer industry described by experts and defense agencies as extremely safe. Despite the government's decision, Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav decided to prevent the government and the industry from implementing the solution, and refused to grant a business license for a pipe to carry the ammonia from the ship to the factory, without any professional grounds, and against 400 workers. In contrast to all other mayors in Israel, who fight for the livelihoods of their workers, Yahav has forced layoffs on Haifa Chemicals and its workers, and their fate is solely in his hands.
"Management understands the workers, but has been left with no choice. The layoffs were not a result of fate. We regret that things have come to such a pass that Koah LaOvdim is not directing its struggle against Yahav - the only person able to save their jobs.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on August 27, 2017
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