Employees at The Phoenix Holdings Ltd. (TASE: PHOE1;PHOE5) are on strike. Workers are not answering telephone calls from customers, not issuing insurance policies, not dealing with claims, and not making payments. The strike began at 12:00 noon today at the insurance company's main branch. The employees stopped work and left the building.
The strike at Phoenix comes in the wake of the management's decision not to talk to the workers representatives before the sale of the company to Fosun about sale bonuses to employees out of the NIS 1.8 billion that Delek Group will receive for its controlling stake in the company. The demand for a sale bonus comes at the same time as the workers are demanding a collective employment agreement.
For its part, the management told the employees that its representatives would meet them if the sale of the company went ahead.
Workers committee chair Orna Biton wrote in a letter to the employees, "It's inconceivable that a company of the size of Phoenix whose results are based on the work and motivation of the thousands of its employees should decide not to pay a sale bonus to those who built it from nothing."
Biton said today's action was one of several steps planned against Delek Group and its controlling shareholder Yitzhak Tshuva, and that if the management did not do the right thing, the plans would be put into action.
"Phoenix's employees have worked every day for years to strengthen this huge corporation and maintain it as a dominant player in the market. I expect Tshuva and his team to understand this, and suggest that they should start to expedite negotiations with us. If the management thinks that it has a monopoly on Phoenix's success it is wrong. We will not agree to the workers being trampled underfoot. If Phoenix is transferred to the Chinese before they reach agreement with us, the Chinese will find themselves receiving a company that continues to fight the management without cease. We will make their lives a misery."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 21, 2015
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