The Construction Industry in Israel-Palestine:

The Construction Industry in Israel-Palestine:
Final Report of the International Labour Delegation

Report by Workers Advice Centre
Published: 20/06/04

Final Report of the International Labor Delegation, hosted by WAC in Israel/Palestine, April 25 - May 1, 2004

The Labor Market in Israel, 2004:
The Construction Industry as a Test Case

A group of 14 trade unionists from seven European countries visited Israel/Palestine from April 25 through May 1, 2004. Their aim was to investigate the labor situation of the migrant workers and the Palestinians, both those in Israel and those from the Occupied Territories. Their visit was organized by the Workers Advice Centre (WAC) - Ma’an. A journal of the visit appears on this site and in Challenge magazine, No. 85.

WAC presented the delegates with a working paper, which they then amended and adopted as a common position for use by trade unions and international institutions. We present the final document:

The purpose of the International Labor Delegation was to gain a first-hand view of the labor market in Israel and Palestine, especially in the construction industry where the distortions show up most clearly. This industry has traditionally been the main source of jobs for Israel’s Arab citizens. It employs most of those Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (the Occupied Territories) who work in Israel. Since the mid-1990’s it has also employed a large percentage of laborers from abroad.

During the week of April 25-May 1, 2004, the Delegation met with the director of Israel’s Finance Ministry; the director of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Employment; members of the Council on Foreign Workers (Lawyers’ Association); representatives of civil organizations defending migrant workers; scholars in the field of Labor Relations; construction workers organized by WAC; and the head of the General Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions.

We shall bring the findings of the Delegation, presented below, to the attention of several bodies: the International Labor Organization (ILO), the UN Committee in Defense of Social and Economic Rights, international labor federations, and other groups that monitor the implementation of international labor conventions. The delegates are requested to publish this report in their own countries.

WAC’s purpose in organizing the Delegation was threefold:

1. With respect to Palestinian workers from the Occupied Territories, to end Israeli government practices that amount to collective punishment. These include the indiscriminate use of closure and the erection of a separation wall.

2. With respect to migrant workers, to end their cruel exploitation in Israel. This has forced half of them to become “illegal.” We hope, through the Delegation, to exert pressure on the home nations of the migrant workers (especially Turkey, Romania, China, Thailand, the Philippines and Bulgaria) and thus to end the cruelties of the personnel companies operating there. We shall also ask the Delegation to undertake systematic action that will compel the Israeli authorities to adopt the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers, to stop persecuting these workers, and to force their employers to obey existing Israeli labor laws.

3. With respect to the Arab citizens of Israel, who have been in the focus of WAC’s activity for the last decade, we ask the Delegation to help us end the policies that discriminate against them in the local labor market, as well as to encourage them in their progress toward organization.

Introduction

The labor market in Israel/ Palestine is plagued by unemployment and instability. As of April 2004, three years of violent conflict and global economic slowdown have plunged the country into recession. The crisis is especially difficult because Israel’s economy suffers from certain chronic ailments:

1) Only 57% of the working-age population participates in the labor force (compared with 67% in European countries).

2) The Palestinian economy of the Territories is utterly dependent on the ability of its members to find employment in Israel;

3) The Arab citizens of Israel (about 20% of its population) live for the most part in separate cities and villages, where they have no industry of their own. Arab unemployment is 1. 5 times that of the nation as a whole, and 98% of the Israeli localities with above-average unemployment are Arab.

4) The chronic violence inhibits foreign investment.

The Israeli government has reacted to the recession by adopting a draconian program of fiscal restraint. Under the slogan of weaning the Israeli jobless away from dependence on handouts and back to employment, the authorities have undertaken a mass deportation of any migrant workers who lack proper papers. [1] In the years 2002-3, there were drastic cuts in the social safety net, affecting the unemployed, the disabled, the elderly, the schools, and the social and municipal services. The government has also undertaken to privatize the public sector. It seeks to weaken organized labor, nullify legally-binding collective labor agreements and bypass the labor courts.

It is in this context that we should view the changes that the labor force has undergone in the construction industry. Here we find most of the groups that suffer from discrimination in Israel: the Arabs from within the country, the Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, and the migrant workers. Out of the 191, 000 who are directly employed in construction (not counting illegal workers, who number between 30, 000 and 40, 000), a very small proportion is organized. Only this small group enjoys social benefits in accordance with the collective agreement for this branch.

A historical survey of the construction industry in Israel

Until the close of the 1980’s, the labor market in construction, as in all Israeli industries, was highly organized. It traditionally depended on Arab citizens, as well as Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The systems of employment were stable and orderly.

Until the late 1960’s, indeed, construction was the best organized sector in the country. The pension fund of its workers was the biggest in the Histadrut. After the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, however, Israel’s labor market absorbed Palestinian workers. The discrimination that was practiced against them, in wages and social benefits, marked the beginning of the labor market’s decline. In the 1980’s the economy entered an era of privatization, and work was “outsourced” to subcontractors. These developments caused a further breach in the defense of organized labor.

During the Gulf War of 1991 and again, on the pretext of security, in April 1993, Israel clamped closure on the Occupied Territories. The result was a sudden shortage of labor in construction and agriculture. The government’s solution was to import migrants without planning or supervision. By 2001 their number had reached 300, 000 - that is, 12. 5% of the labor force (more than twice the average for the industrial West). Government decisions to restrict the practice proved toothless (for example, a decision that only Israelis should be employed in public projects).

During the recession of 2002, a consensus formed in economic circles that the importation of migrant workers creates a reservoir of labor which, because it is cheap and unorganized, competes unfairly with local workers. The heads of the Finance Ministry expressed the dilemma thus: “At a time when Israel has 300, 000 migrant workers, it also has 250, 000 jobless. This is an impossible situation. We must solve it.”

Accordingly, the government began to lower the allotment of permits for the importation of construction workers. In 2001 the allotment had been for 45, 000 migrants. In 2002 and 2003 this was reduced to 30, 000, and in 2004 to 20, 000. In September 2002, furthermore, the government decided on a policy of “Closed Skies.” It forbade the importation of additional workers. At the same time it created a Migration Police, charged expressly with the task of deporting 50, 000 illegal migrants annually. For the last year and a half this force has oppressed, persecuted, arrested and expelled. While deporting with its left hand, however, the government continues importing with its right, circumventing its own decisions: a revolving-door policy.

Nor has there been a parallel enforcement of the law against employers. The State Comptroller wrote in the report for 2002 that employers who delayed the payment of wages, confiscated workers’ passports and employed unauthorized workers continued receiving permits to hire more migrants. [2]

At the end of 2002, despite the ongoing Intifada, the government asked the contractors to accept Palestinian workers, both as a substitute for the migrants and as a means of alleviating misery in the Occupied Territories. Nothing was done, however, to guarantee the implementation of this promise. The government granted permits, indeed, to 15, 000 Palestinian workers - all older than 35 - but it then erected barriers on the pretext of security. The workers encounter enormous difficulties in reaching their jobs, even on “normal” days[3]. On days of complete closure, they cannot reach them at all. As of today, for example, full closure has continued for more than a month. The construction firms, which suffered greatly from the lack of regularity in the supply of Palestinian labor, have concluded that this source cannot be relied on.

In response to these developments, Israeli Arabs (who had been shunted out of construction in the 1990’s) could again find jobs. This trend has become visible in the last two years. Estimates vary widely. The Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel (ACBI) puts the number of new Arab workers and returnees at 3600, whereas the Bank of Israel puts it at 14, 000. [4] Yet these workers, for the most part, lack organization, social benefits, and adequate safety procedures. WAC, for its part, has carried out a campaign called A Job to Win, gaining 600 jobs with proper pay and under proper conditions, but our group is still a minority. (See the chapter below on the WAC campaign.)

The building contractors and the personnel companies have very strong lobbies. These push for a change in policy, so that they can again import migrants without restraint and under the old conditions. [5] Unless there is ironclad legislation protecting organized labor, we fear a relapse from the recent, partial progress that has been made in the hiring of organized local workers.

Let us now turn, in greater detail, to each of the principal groups among construction workers.

Chapter 1
Arab Workers in Israel: Institutionalized Discrimination

Among Arab citizens of working age, only 39% participate in the labor force, compared with 57% for Israel as a whole. (These figures, from 2002, include both those who have jobs and those who seek them.) Whereas 60. 3% of Arab men participate (a rate similar to that of Jewish men), only 17. 1% of Arab women do, compared to 53. 8% of Jewish women. [6]

During the last decade unemployment has become a major problem for the Arab workers in Israel. In many towns its rate amounts to 20 percent or more (if we take into account Arab women the level of unemployment reaches 35%[7]). This situation is the product of a long-lasting policy of discrimination against Arab citizens in the job market, which worsened after the year 2000 because of the economic crisis. Meanwhile, the government has drastically cut its social expenditures since 2002, increasing the poverty of the Arab workers.

The Adva Center, an Israeli research institution, has shown that within Israel, the average gross salary in Jewish cities and towns is nearly twice that in Arab communities. The average monthly income in the Jewish sector is NIS 9, 363 (ca. 1700 EURO), while that in the Arab sector is NIS 5, 252. The average wage in Arab communities is lower by 30% than that of the chronically lagging Jewish development towns. [8]

This situation should be viewed against the background of the Israeli policy towards its Arab citizens since 1948. In his valuable research on the Arab economy in Israel, Dr. Aziz Haidar concluded that the Arab community has lost most of its land reserves because of systematic expropriation, while unable to gain permits for industrial development. Within three decades, these two factors have transformed a peasant society into one of workers commuting to Jewish industrial areas. [9]

According to Israel’s Law of Equal Opportunities, Arab citizens are supposed to have equal footing in the job market. In reality, security reasons are used, often without reasonable grounds, to bar them from the better jobs. According to Dr. Haidar, the Arab workers, although citizens, “bear strong similarities to migrant workers.” Arabs occupy the lowest positions in all branches of the labor market; their working conditions are far worse than those of their Jewish counterparts; and they are much more vulnerable to economic fluctuations. Their patterns of employment and unemployment are similar to those of foreign workers. [10]

When we remember how few Arab women participate in Israel’s labor force and how limited are the positions open to Arab men, we can understand why construction has become the major industrial branch for Arab workers. According to estimates by WAC, the labor market in construction today includes about 50, 000 Arab Israelis, who make up 17% of the total Arab labor force and 25% of construction workers overall. Because two other branches that hired Arab workers in the past, namely textiles and community services, have been very hard hit during the last few years, the construction sector alone survives as the essential source of jobs. [11]

The fluctuations in the building sector have had a great impact, therefore, on the decline of the Arab economy. There was a great swell of building expansion in the early nineties, because of the huge immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union. Many Arab construction workers, who had acquired knowledge and skill, left the big Israeli firms, where they had steady and stable work, to take jobs with subcontractors who promised much but often failed to deliver. At the same time, however, the government clamped closure on the Occupied Territories, as mentioned above, and the influx of migrants began.

Until 1996, the construction industry absorbed all the Arab workers in Israel who wanted jobs, as well as large numbers of migrants from Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria and China. That, however, was the high point. Then the number of projects began to decline. There followed a steady decline in the number of Arab workers, while the migrants, who cost much less and had no bargaining power, continued to be hired.

According to Professor Zvi Eckstein of Tel Aviv University, between 1996 and 2001 some 35, 000 Israeli workers, most of them Arabs, lost their jobs in construction. [12] The contracting firms, in this same period, increased the importation of migrants with the approval of the government ministries. Thus in 1996, the record year for employment in construction, the total number of workers was 247, 000. Of these, 150, 000 were Israelis; 28, 000 Palestinians; 69, 000 migrants. [13] By 2002, the total number of workers had dropped to 211, 700. Of these, 120, 700 were Israelis; 11, 000 Palestinians (including those without valid work permits); and 80, 000 were migrants. [14]

Between 1996 and 2002, then, the number of Israeli workers in construction dropped by 35, 000 while the number of migrants rose by 11, 000. Those who lost their jobs were organized workers, while those who received jobs were utterly lacking in representation and bargaining power.

In 2002, Attorney Yehiel Katz prepared a report on the pension fund of construction workers, which he had been appointed by the Finance Ministry to supervise. His report showed a decline in the number of members during this period from about 25, 000 to 5000. [15] He also pointed to withdrawals of money by workers who had been fired. This report is important. When members leave a pension fund, this amounts to recognition that the loss of work is not temporary.

Against this background, WAC has begun opening the doors of major construction companies to Arab workers. Since January 2002, WAC has placed 600 workers in fifteen companies. We have based these placements on the Construction Workers’ Collective Agreement from 1999, which ensures fair wages, benefits and conditions.

In January 2003, after a fierce struggle with the Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel (ACBI), WAC made the protocol of an agreement with it. According to this, the ACBI would encourage building firms to contact WAC with a view to hiring workers in accordance with existing labor law. The ACBI has not been consistent in its position. In some cases it has tried to use the protocol with WAC as a fig leaf, while continuing its lobbying efforts to bring in migrant workers under the old terms. When Israel closed the Occupied Territories for a long period in March 2004, barring some 15, 000 workers, the ACBI issued an urgent call to the government to renew the importation of migrant workers[16].

Chapter 2
The Palestinian Workers: Closure and Collective Punishment

A second important component of the labor force in the construction industry consists of the Palestinian workers from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (WBGS). For more than three decades, these workers formed the backbone of the industry. Today, with the erection of the separation wall and the plan of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to “disconnect” from Gaza, these workers face the prospect of perpetual unemployment.

Before Israel clamped closure on the WBGS in 1993, about 120, 000 Palestinians commuted to Israel. Since then Israel has operated closure like a faucet, gradually pushing them out of the market. The immediate effect of the separation wall, however, is being felt especially among illegal Palestinian workers, estimated at 35, 000, who have been able until now to sneak around the checkpoints. Their ability to do this served for years as a social safety valve. The wall shuts this valve. In the areas of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem, and Qalqilya, where the wall already exists, the pressure is building up without relief.

Thousands of Palestinians also found work at the industrial centers in the border areas, especially at Erez on the northern border of the Gaza Strip. In the light of Sharon’s proposed “disconnection” from Gaza, the future of these areas is also questionable. The Israeli attitude, expressed in the disconnection plan, indicates a readiness to waive all responsibility for sources of livelihood in the Occupied Territories. [17]

A historical review

Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. On October 8, 1970, the Israeli cabinet decided to let Palestinians work in Israel. By making them depend on Israel for jobs, it was thought, they would be less likely to resist an ongoing Occupation.

The Territories became not only a source of manual labor, but also, until the late eighties (when high-tech took the lead in Israel’s economy), its biggest export market after the United States. No Palestinian industry could compete with imports from Israel, so none arose. There is no Palestinian industrial base.

By 1993, 120, 000 Palestinians were commuting to Israel for work. Their earnings made up a major part of the income in the West Bank and Gaza. In that year, however, Israel imposed the closure, in effect firing all those breadwinners with a single stroke of the pen. Closure has been in effect, with varying severity, ever since.

Closure is collective punishment. Israel deliberately uses it as such, opening or closing the faucet for its political purposes. Tens of thousands of innocent people are punished because of the acts of a few. Collective punishment is illegal according to the Geneva Convention, Article 33, to which Israel is a signatory.

When first imposed in March 1993, closure had a negative effect on Israel as well. There was a sudden shortage of manual labor in construction and agriculture. In the spirit of globalization, Israel solved the problem by replacing the Palestinians with migrant workers, who proved to be cheaper. (See Chapter 3). This occurred within a few years. Israeli contractors gained cheap labor, while the political establishment continued its policy of containing the Palestinians within cantons. These measures have been part of the ongoing attempt to suppress the Palestinian people’s desire for self-determination.

In September 1993 the first of the Oslo Accords was signed. They proved to be unbalanced. While Israel enjoyed years of strong economic growth (1993-2000), the Territories grew only in poverty. The Paris Protocol, signed by Israel and the PLO on April 29, 1994, did not allow for an independent economic entity. [18] “Israel... did not want to establish an economic border with the Palestinian Authority, an act that would give a clear flavor of sovereignty and create a binding precedent on the eve of the final status stage. The Palestinian Authority had no choice but to accept the model set forth in the Protocol, because Israel made acceptance a condition for Israel’s continuing to allow Palestinians to work in Israel.” [19]

The Oslo Accords created the Palestinian Authority (PA). During its existence (effectively ended by Israel in May 2002), the Palestinian economy remained dependent on Israel. As long as Palestine is not free to establish economic relations, trading independently of Israel, the obligations of Israel as the occupying power will remain.

Meanwhile, the workforce grew. Dr. Onn Winkler, in a paper on “Trends in the Palestinian Economy Before and After the Oslo Agreement”[20], states that after the Gulf Crisis of 1990-91, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian workers were forced to leave their jobs in the Gulf States. They returned to the Occupied Territories, and the population rose accordingly. In 1992, the Palestinian labor force amounted to 350, 000. By 1999 it had risen to more than 630, 000. This increase had the effect of reversing, in per capita terms, any economic growth that took place before the present Intifada.

During the Oslo years, in the areas under the control of the PA, there was a considerable expansion of the public sector. This did not, however, create an independent basis for industry, such as could supply work for the increasing number of job seekers. The dependence on Israel continued.

The Palestinian business sector likewise continued to depend on Israel for energy, communications, raw materials, and its ability to export. This reality has not changed in the last three and a half years of Intifada, nor is it about to change as a result of Sharon’s disconnection plan.

The outbreak of the second Intifada led to a further deterioration in the Territories. Israel used harsher means of economic oppression in its attempt to break the spirit of the people. A report by the UN Special Commission for Palestine (UNSCO) pointed out the dangers: “The Palestinian economy is mired in a deep crisis, with unemployment levels rising significantly over the first half of 2002... Particularly hard hit are the West Bank cities and towns, which the Israeli military has placed under lengthy curfews in response to a wave of terror attacks earlier this year. On days with curfew, the estimated unemployment rate reached 63. 3 percent. Income losses now total US$3. 3 billion since October 2000. Poverty levels continue to increase at alarming rates, reaching 70 percent in the Gaza Strip.”[21]

This collective punishment also has the effect of paralyzing those Israeli employers who rely on Palestinians, and they tend to seek workers elsewhere. Since Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin in March 2004, universal closure has lasted for more than a month; it is still in effect as we write this paper.

Against this background, it is important to examine the legal status of the Palestinian workers. We stress this aspect because of its relevance to the main issues of this paper, although there are countless other ways as well by which Israel discriminates against these workers and tramples on their rights: through violence, manipulation, withholding of pay, and prevention of medical treatment.

1. Israel is obligated to allow the entry of Palestinian workers

The status of Palestinian workers from the Occupied Territories is anchored in the decision of the Israeli cabinet mentioned above (October 8, 1970), which is still in effect. It places the employment of Palestinian workers under the supervision of the Employment Service. Firms that wish to hire these workers have to receive authorization from the Employment Service and to pay them according to its terms. The employer must report the number of hours a worker has put in and transfer all the latter’s earnings to the tax authorities; then the Payments Department transfers the money to the worker.

This arrangement never became law. It served as a practical guideline, however, until the passage of the Foreign Workers Law in 1991. [22] On its face, this new law might seem to improve the situation for Palestinian workers. In fact, the opposite occurred. Israel has a particular responsibility to ensure sources of livelihood for the Palestinian workers. The new law, however, equated their status with that of workers from any foreign country.

Moreover, the violent nature of the conflict led the government, starting in 1993, to prefer the importation of workers from abroad, despite the economic and social burden that such a labor force entails. In an important work on the legal situation of Palestinian workers, Dr. Guy Mundlak reports:

“The Foreign Workers Law fails to distinguish between foreign workers and Palestinian workers. Despite the political and cultural difference between the two groups, well acknowledged in Israel the legislature opted for an equal treatment of the two groups. The clustering of the two groups together, however, symbolizes an effort to erase the distinct position of Palestinian workers. The assimilation of Palestinian workers into foreign workers in the 1990s reverses the symbolic effort of the 1970 Cabinet decision.”[23]

The arrangement that had existed for thirty years was thus set aside, both in the formal legal sense, with the passage of the Foreign Workers Law, and in the practical sense, namely, in the allotment of permits for work in Israel. It is our contention that Palestinian and all other migrant workers should be equal to Israeli workers with regard to employment, wages, social benefits etc. This principle, however, should not blur the difference between Palestinian and migrant workers. The difference results from Israel’s special obligation, as an occupying power, to ensure means of livelihood to the workers from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, whereas no such obligation exists toward workers from other countries.

Israel’s attitude toward the Palestinian workers amounts to saying: “We made you completely dependent on us, we prevented the rise of industry in your territories, we used you for thirty years, and now we wash our hands of you. Goodbye, good luck, good riddance.”

2. The Social rights of the Palestinian Workers

Both the legal status of the Palestinian workers and their social benefits depend on the cabinet decision of 1970, which states that “an employee from the Occupied Territories is entitled to the social benefits that every other worker in Israel with identical circumstances is entitled to by law and the collective labor agreements.” This decision, however, was formulated in a deceptive manner. In its conclusion, without explanation, it states that the payments transferred to the National Insurance Institute (Bituach Leumi) will cover only work-related accidents. [24]

Thus the percentage of deductions for National Insurance from Palestinian workers’ wages is the same as that deducted from Israeli workers. However, the Palestinian workers are insured only for work accidents. (Insurance covering employer bankruptcy and maternity benefits was added later.) “The money that goes, in the case of Israelis, to cover other areas of national insurance, such as unemployment benefits, supplemental income, old-age pension, children’s allotment, disability pension, nursing care, and the like, ‘will be transferred to a fund of the Territories intended for social development. ‘ In other words, most of the money deducted from Palestinian workers as ‘national insurance’ does not go toward that purpose, but to some unknown fund for which Israel is responsible. There was good reason for the government to classify this decision ‘Extremely Confidential’.” [25]

In effect, the National Insurance payments turned out to be a special tax on Palestinian workers, collected in order to raise the cost of their labor - but without their gaining equivalent benefits. The Israeli authorities equalized the costs of labor in order to defend the local labor market, but they did not equalize workers’ benefits. [26]

Israel also froze the pension benefits of Palestinian workers. Dr. Lev Grinberg of Ben Gurion University in Beersheba has attempted to track these pensions. He describes how the money was transferred to a secret fund, apparently controlled by the Bank of Israel. Even Knesset members who sought information have gotten nowhere. [27]

With regard to both National Insurance and the pension fund, Israel has violated the basic rights of Palestinian workers to equal social benefits. These rights are defended under two conventions of the International Labor Organization: 1) Convention No. 48 on the pension rights of migrant workers, and 2) Convention No. 143, on the obligation to ensure equality of pay and benefits to migrant workers.

Chapter 3
Migrant Labor in the Construction Industry

Israel has turned a blind eye to the exploitation of migrant workers, who have been legally imported within the framework of intergovernmental agreements. By law, these workers are entitled to equality with Israelis in their working conditions. Yet Israel’s government ignores its obligation to enforce the employment laws. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) have recently issued a report entitled, Migrant Workers in Israel - A Contemporary Form of Slavery. It includes this passage: “Since the 1960s, the number of migrant workers throughout the world has increased dramatically and this form of labour is widely used. The situation in Israel is unique though, since migrant workers are deliberately used to replace Palestinian workers and also because of the role that this policy plays in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”[28]

Strong incentives lie behind the importation of migrant labor to Israel.

It is cheap. According to Economics Professor Zvi Eckstein, a migrant worker doing basic construction costs his employer, on average, $5. 00 per hour, while a local worker costs $7. 00. In the course of a year that amounts to a saving of $4800 per worker. [29]

Personnel companies make fortunes from the trade.

The tendency towards privatization allows the whole operation to be organized by private companies, outside government control.

The economic situation in the countries that send the workers is such that their governments, eager for foreign currency, often turn a blind eye to the exploitation of their citizens.

In 2002, the Israeli economy came to the point of collapse. One reason was imbalance: Israelis by the tens of thousands had been shunted out of their jobs, becoming dependent on welfare. Leading economists warned repeatedly about the irrational structure of the market. At last the government started to act.

In September 2002, under the slogan “War on Foreign Labor”, the government formed the “Migration Police Force” mentioned earlier. Its goal is to deport as many as 50, 000 illegal migrant workers per year. But who are these “illegals”? They are people who arrived in Israel legally to work, after paying thousands of dollars to mediators for the privilege. Bound to the employer (whose name is inscribed in the worker’s passport, which the employer illegally holds), unable to change jobs, living in foul conditions, his pay reduced or postponed, he is likely to go “underground,” becoming illegal. More than half of the once-legal migrants have done precisely this. These are the people whom the Migration Police arrest and deport.

In this way, a “revolving door” has been created - new “legal” workers in, old “illegals” out. The latter have frequently established families here. When deportation occurs, the families are often divided.

This situation continues because there are powerful lobbies at work, consisting of personnel (“manpower”) companies, contractors and farmers’ associations. These lobbies have enormous leverage in various government departments. [30]

The violation of migrants’ rights in Israel has many aspects. Here we shall indicate the two major ones:

1. A system of forced labor.

In permitting the importation of workers, Israeli governments have been concerned that they should not become a demographic threat to the Jewish character of the state. A careful distinction is made therefore, so that the employer, not the state, bears responsibility for the arrival, sojourn and departure of each worker. The worker, as mentioned, is legally bound to the employer. He cannot change jobs, even when the employer violates his honor or rights. (In 2002 the Government for the first time allowed migrant workers to change their employers. A worker wanting to do this must find a new employer who is authorized to hire a migrant, and the process must be approved by the Interior Ministry. This positive step has had only partial implementation) [31].

Kav La’Oved (Workers’ Hotline) has written about the arrangements for importing Romanian workers to Israel. In 2002 there were about 50, 000 of these, almost all in construction. The report describes the results of the “binding arrangement” described in the previous paragraph:

“The policy, which assigns permits to employers, rather than workers, is the first and foremost enabler of migrant worker trafficking. It allows employers to abuse workers without risk of denunciation. Along with the debt and mortgages, which workers incur to pay the high mediation fees, it generates a situation of servitude. This issue, as well as revoking permits of workers who find spouses, and the occasional arbitrary revoking of permits, are the doing of the Home Office and Labour Ministry.”[32]

The Israeli practice of assigning work permits to the individual employer, rather than to the worker, stands in sharp contrast to the nation’s obligations under internationally accepted norms, including several ILO conventions and especially the UN Convention on Migrant Workers:

“Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”[33]

It is important to note the involvement of official authorities in the practice of making the migrant workers pay for the future work permit. The report by Kav La’Oved, cited above, indicates that the Romanian government, the Israeli Embassy to Romania and the ACBI all take part in the trafficking in workers. The report states: “On February 21, 2002, the Romanian National Office for Recruitment and Employment Abroad signed a contract with the Israeli Association of Builders and Contractors.”[34] The contract was to come into effect 45 days later. The Romanian authorities disregard breaches of this contract by Israeli employers concerning terms of employment (Articles 7, 11 (2), and 13 in the contract), as well as general violations of workers’ human rights by Israeli employers and authorities.

Such misbehaviour has come under fire. The Report of the US State Department on Human Rights for 2003 has harshly criticised Israel: “To combat labor trafficking, the Immigration Authority was established in September 2002 to coordinate government activity related to foreign nationals, including the investigation of offenses against migrant workers. Labor laws determining minimum wage, guaranteed pay and annual leave apply to all workers in Israel, but enforcement measures are mainly directed against migrant workers and not against the employers who may openly breach the law. The Immigration Authority has an investigation unit that has uncovered several networks of criminals involved in document forgery and fraud. Prosecutors filed an indictment against four suspects allegedly involved in abusing workers from Bulgaria”[35].

2. The migrant workers do not receive minimal social benefits

A report of the Adva Center from June 2003 takes up Convention No. 48 of the International Labor Organization, concerning pension rights. This convention “obliges the State to concern itself with the pension rights of migrant workers, as it does towards its own employed citizens. The State of Israel confirmed this convention in January 1963.”[36]

The egalitarian approach, which holds that the rights of a migrant worker will not be trampled on in comparison with those of a local worker, received reinforcement from a decision by the Israeli government itself, taken in May 1993, when the massive importation of labor was just beginning. [37] Published by the Employment Service in the Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot on May 17, 1993 the decision stated several conditions for employing a migrant worker:

1. The contractor will pay the migrant workers according to law, and according to the collective agreements applying to the construction industry.

2. For every migrant worker he hires, the contractor must hire two non-professional Israeli workers.

According to this clear decision, all the articles of the existing collective agreement in construction apply as well to the migrant workers, in line with the spirit of the international conventions. Every contractor, therefore, had to sign a written commitment to the Employment Service, obliging him to abide by the above conditions. [38]

But this commitment, as well as the government’s decision from 1993, remained on paper only. In a sharply critical report, Yehiel Katz (cited earlier) describes how the contractors emptied the decision of all content. Katz also accuses the heads of the construction workers’ pension fund, writing that they violated international conventions, in the early 1990’s, by making common cause with the contractors to lower the cost of labor. The new reality, Katz holds, led to the firing of Israeli workers and their replacement by migrants. This process became manifest, as said above, in the large number of Israelis who withdrew from the pension fund.

The violation of migrant rights became legal on the last day of 1999. A collective agreement concerning construction workers, signed by the contractors’ association (ACBI) and the Histadrut, contained a separate article reducing pension payments in the case of migrant workers from 18% of salary to 4%. In the vast majority of cases, pension payments had not been made for migrants anyway, but now the omission was legal.

In July 2003, the question of equal conditions for migrant workers came to a test in an Israeli court. The immediate issue here concerned hotel workers, but the same principle applies in construction. The Regional Court for Labor in Beersheba ruled in the matter. Its decision applied the general collective agreement for the hotel industry to migrant workers. The court wrote: “The collective agreement applies to ‘every worker’ employed in the hotel at the service of the employer, who belongs to the Hotels Association, which is a side in the agreement.”[39] The decision also relates to ILO convention No. 97: “It is clear from this that on the basis of the international convention concerning migrant workers, the plaintiff has the right to benefit from the results of the collective negotiations that came to expression in the collective agreements in the hotel sector.”

The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families clearly states the following: “With respect to social security, migrant workers and members of their families shall enjoy in the State of employment the same treatment granted to nationals in so far as they fulfil the requirements provided for by the applicable legislation of that State and the applicable bilateral and multilateral treaties. The competent authorities of the State of origin and the State of employment can at any time establish the necessary arrangements to determine the modalities of application of this norm.”[40]

Conclusion

The UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers, which entered into force on July 2003, has broadened the conception of equal treatment for these workers. The introduction to this important document includes these words: “The Convention breaks new ground in defining those rights which apply to certain categories of migrant workers and their families, including: ‘frontier workers’, who reside in a neighbouring State to which they return daily or at least once a week; seasonal workers; seafarers employed on vessels registered in a State other than their own; workers on offshore installations which are under the jurisdiction of a State other than their own; itinerant workers; migrants employed for a specific project; self-employed workers.”[41]

Israel did not become a signatory to this new convention. The majority of workers in its construction branch, including Palestinians, migrants and Israeli citizens (mostly Arabs), are still today subject to exploitation. Their rights are violated, both as human beings and as workers. The Israeli authorities lag behind legislation elsewhere in several ways: they refrain from ratifying other recent labor conventions as well; they do not enforce their own labor laws; they exploit the excuse of “security considerations” in a disproportional manner; they apply the law selectively; and they close their eyes to the criminality of the contractors and the personnel companies. There is an urgent need for action on the local level, as well as the international, to bring about full equality among workers without regard to citizenship, nationality or race.

The International Labor Delegation, visiting Israel/Palestine from April 25 through May 1, 2004, may consider the following demands for possible endorsement:

1. Israel should ratify the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers, mentioned above.

2. Israel should end the policy of closure, which amounts to collective punishment against Palestinian workers from the Occupied Territories. This punishment flies in the face of law and reason. Israel’s right to defend itself cannot include the right to punish tens of thousands of workers whenever one person violates the law.

3. Israel should end all formed of bonded labor. The “binding arrangement” is basic to the violation of migrants’ rights in this country. There must be legislation against the practice of exacting fees from the worker, or making him mortgage his house and property, as a condition for working in Israel. The opposition to such methods must take place in cooperation with trade unions in the lands from which the migrants come, such as China, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, the Philippines and Thailand.

4. There must be action, both in legislation and practical enforcement, to establish equal wages and social benefits for equal work.

[1]“As part of the policy of directing populations toward the labor market and toward a transition from welfare to labor and following the reforms in income supplement and child allowances, the 2004 budget proposes several measures that are intended to create motivation to work and to increase the percentage of people participating in the labor market.” Israel Economic Recovery Plan - Stage II Transition to Growth - Finance Ministry website: http://www.mof.gov.il/beinle/economic_plan.pdf

[2] Annual Report of the State Comptroller 53B for 2002 and for Fiscal Year 2001 (Hebrew)
click here

[3] “With Gazan Workers: Checkpoint Death” - See WAC’s website, www.workersadvicecenter.org/With-Gazan-workers.htm and “Report by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza” (March 2004) www.workersadvicecenter.org/Report-by-union.htm

[4] Bank Of Israel, Information and Data March 14, 2004 www.bankisrael.gov.il/deptdata/mehkar/indic/eng_g02.htm

[5] In a letter to the Ministries of Finance and Employment, dated March 3, 2004, ACBI Chairperson Y. Segav demanded the formation of a Committee of Investigation concerning the failure of the policy regarding migrant workers. The demand of the ACBI was clear: Allow us to bring more workers. Ha’aretz March 9, 2004

[6] Israel Central Bureau of Statistics 2003 - www.cbs.gov.il/engindex.htm

[7] Ha’aretz April 22, 2004 (Hebrew). Haim Biur quoted a Histadrut official who said that the effective unemployment rate of Arabs is 35%.

[8] Adva Center, “Israel: A Social Report 2003” www.adva.org/ISRAEL_2003_ENG.pdf

[9] Dr. Aziz Haidar “The Arab Population in the Israeli Economy” 1990. International Center for Peace in the Middle East, p. 130

[10] Adva Center, “Israel: A Social Report 2003” www.adva.org/ISRAEL_2003_ENG.pdf

[11] During the past decade, the textile industry in Israel lost 20, 000 jobs as a result of the transfer of production to cheaper countries, including Jordan and Egypt. The shutdown of sewing workshops greatly damaged the main source of income for Arab women. In addition, many local government councils, which employ people in community services, have been unable to pay salaries for many months. This source of income, once considered reliable, has become totally unstable.