MIDEAST: Palestinian labourers in Israeli settlements form a union and strike in demand of full worker rights

Record ID: 339974

  • Title: MIDEAST: Palestinian labourers in Israeli settlements form a union and strike in demand of full worker rights
  • Date: 30th June 2011
  • Summary: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (JUNE 29, 2011) (REUTERS) DR. AMIR PAZ-FUCHS WALKING TOWARDS CAMERA (SOUNDBITE) (English) AMIR PAZ-FUCHS, LEGAL ANALYST, SAYING: "There is no doubt that this new awareness has something to do with the parallel awareness within the Arab world. Within the Arab world unions have been very much involved in the demonstrations and I think that there is no coi
  • Embargoed: 15th July 2011 13:00
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  • Location: Israel, West bank
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: Business,International Relations,Employment,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA85H7J6OFIGIQ0NE4CPJJ6GVYS
  • Story Text: Forty workers sitting in a strike tent outside the front gate of their workplace for over 14 days is not unusual in most countries. But in the case of Palestinian workers striking at an Israeli-owned quarry in the occupied West Bank, it is a first, says an Israeli advice centre for workers.
    Palestinian workers of the Salit gravel quarry near the settlement of Ma'ale Adumim have congregated to demand better pay and working conditions and declared an open-ended strike in mid-June, after management refused to sign a collective agreement giving them the basic rights they say they are entitled to under Israeli law.
    "No insurance, no pension and low wages. We are living in the dust. For 27 years I've got nothing," truck driver Mohammed Abdallah told Reuters television at the protest tent. Workers also complain of delay in pay, no training or protection from work injuries, and humiliating treatment by the company.
    "There is no health insurance, my salary is 200 (New Israeli) shekels ($58 per day), but this is for a 10 hour work day, with only one half hour break, even though to work on this equipment you have to have a replacement, there must be two people, you have to work one hour and rest one hour because the work is very difficult," said striking worker Musa Arara, who has been employed at Salit for 28 years.
    According to the Palestinian government, over 25,000 Palestinians are currently working in Israeli-owned businesses in the West Bank. Palestinian workers' organisations say the number is as high as 40,000, including unregistered workers who turn up for employment and are paid in cash, with no record of their employment. As a result, they do not pay taxes to the Palestinian Authority.
    Organisations that provide assistance to workers both in Israel and the West Bank say complaints by Palestinian labourers against their employers are very common, and official government scrutiny of employment practices is almost non-existent. This leads to workers getting a very low wage or having their pay held back for extended periods. They say they also do not get social security, pension payments and health insurance cover as stated by Israeli law.
    "The Israeli factories or enterprises are using the fact that Palestinians have no permission to move from place to place, that they have no possibility of just applying to a job like anywhere else in the world, and they take advantage of it. They pay them very little, in many cases they pay far below the minimum wage. They have in many cases no social benefits, and in many cases that I have heard of they are under sheer terror in the workplace, and of course these is businessmen who are benefiting from the Israeli occupation," says Roni Ben-Efrat from the Israeli Work Advice Centre (WAC) who are supporting and guiding the Salit workers' struggle.
    After Israel occupied the West Bank after a 1967 war, labour practices applied in the area were modelled on Jordanian labour law from 1965, in accordance with the international law for occupied territories. With time, the Jordanian law once considered advanced became irrelevant, whereas Israeli labour laws continued to provide workers with more and more benefits, says legal expert Dr. Amir Paz-Fuchs.
    In 2007, a historic ruling by Israel's Supreme Court said Israeli employers must give Palestinian workers all the rights given to employees under the Israeli law. These include at least a minimum wage (currently about $1,150 per month), social benefits, insurance, severance pay and other rights. This change has also opened the way for the formation of workers committees and unions.
    Workers in Salit contacted WAC in 2007, and with its help formed a union and started negotiations with the management. The establishment of a union by Palestinian workers working for Israeli employers and sanctioned by the Israeli court is an unprecedented measure, says Ben-Efrat.
    "They wanted to establish a union, which is also something quite unique because you know, there are very very many pressures on workers. The whole idea of organising is quite frightening when you need to keep your job. But they were very firm," she said, adding that WAC was recently approached by another group of West Bank workers who are considering a similar move.
    Despite the 2007 ruling, the situation on the ground remains grave for the majority of such workers.
    Paz-Fuchs told Reuters in Tel Aviv that Israeli employers were bypassing the 2007 ruling in two ways. In contracts they sign with Palestinians, they include a clause bringing Jordanian law into force. They also tend to work via a Palestinian contractor to be a third party and act as the direct employer of the Palestinians.
    The Salit workers' struggle and its timing, added Paz-Fuchs, is not unrelated to the recent developments in the Arab world.
    "There is no doubt that this new awareness has something to do with the parallel awareness within the Arab world. Within the Arab world unions have been very much involved in the demonstrations and I think that there is no coincidence that at this time we are seeing a kind of a collectivist ideology of workers standing united against some form of oppression," he said.
    Whether striking Salit workers were inspired by Cairo's Tahrir Square when they locked the trucks and pitched their protest tent is still unclear and the outcome of their struggle is yet to be known. The Salit quarry owners declined to be interviewed by Reuters and have reportedly tried to dismiss three of the strikers but court orders have so far prevented them from doing so.
    Activists fear the strike will collapse as the workers are all from poor backgrounds and the organisation representing them is too small to have a strike fund. Regardless, the struggle, whether successful or not, has set a precedent for Palestinian workers.
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