The heads of several workers committees organized in the Histadrut recently announced their support for Israel’s right-wing Likud party, arguing that they could form a counterforce within that party against privatization schemes. Rather than stepping up to head a social movement and lend the weight of organized labour to the struggle for peace and equality, and in favour of a new social agenda, as unions do in Britain and in several Western countries, these short-sighted leaders prefer to support Likud, thus giving a hand to a party that is right-wing, war-mongering and anti-labour.

The workers at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently halted operations at all Israeli embassies in Israel and abroad, causing, amongst other things, the cancellation of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s planned visit to Latin America. The workers held a strike and displayed great civil courage in making it clear that their social needs come first, despite accusations of harming the national interest.

The Foreign Ministry workers’ struggle joins a long list of new struggles and unionization drives that the Histadrut (the National Federation of Labour) has been leading lately. The Ness Technologies workers and workers at the cellular phone and insurance companies are part of this wave of unionization. The effort of workers at Pelephone, a cell phone company, was a turning point, because the employer opposed the effort vehemently, threatening workers and trying to impair the leaders’ job conditions. The National Labour Court ruling in favour of the Pelephone workers, in January 2013, became a landmark for the right to organize, reaffirming the total ban on employers’ involvement in the process.

This is no doubt a healthy process, continuing the awakening of the 2011 social justice protests and expressing disgust at the takeover of Israel by tycoons. But when this new labour power is translated into the political arena, it turns out that some of the leaders continue to think in old terms. One of these is Pelephone Workers Committee Chairperson Barak Levi, who began last week to recruit the workers for Likud party membership. The putative logic is that if workers want to gain power, they should enter the ruling party, which is presently the Likud, vote in the primaries, and thus threaten those politicians who are anti-labour.

Levi claims to be building a power base within the Likud Central Committee in order to block policies that would foster competition in the cellular and telecom industry, for such policies might adversely affect their profits and hence the conditions of employment within them. Levi’s approach is also taken by Ashdod Port Workers Committee Chairman Alon Hassan. A person with dubious private monopolies in the port, Hassan fell out last year with then Labour Party leader Shelly Yachimovich; he influenced his mates in the port to shift their loyalty to Yitzhak “Buji” Herzog. Yachimovich did indeed lose her position. Now Hassan has announced that he is shifting his loyalty from Labour to Likud in order to unseat the Minister of Transportation, Likud’s Yisrael Katz. For Katz has been leading a ruthless attack on the workers committees at the Ashdod and Haifa Ports as part of his plan to build two privately owned ports, thus cutting the government’s monopoly over the ports.

It is wrong, corrupt, and destructive for union leaders to join the Likud in quest of political leverage in the trade-unionist struggle. They are copying the tactics of the extremist Moshe Feiglin group, which has entered the Likud in the past decade with great success. The comparison is absurd and hopeless. When a far-right group like Feiglin’s enters the Likud, it joins a party which is basically close to its views. On the other hand, when organized workers enter Likud they join a party that is hostile towards the very idea of organized labour, a party that is tied inextricably to capital. Their chance of gaining influence within the Likud is close to zero.

By seeking to join the Likud, these two important labour leaders are choosing a corrupt and unprincipled path. First, the new affiliation amounts to a declaration that issues like the occupation of Palestinian lands, the rights of the Palestinian people, and racism do not interest them. This is a clear negation of the principle of solidarity between workers, regardless of nation, religion, and race, which is the basis for the notion of a trade union. The two leaders share another motive as well: there is no risk that anyone in the Likud will criticize them for a number of questionable practices that they already follow: allowing contracted workers into their workplaces, rampant nepotism, benefits to family members, and personal use of their status as Workers Committee representatives.

The workers’ movement worldwide has been historically connected to the socialist and social democratic parties. It has opposed racism, religious or national discrimination, and military occupation. It has led the call for peace and disarmament. In many countries, when trade unions found that the traditional political parties were supporting the neoliberal capitalistic line, they launched the movement to create an independent leftist alternative. In 2005, for example, labour and socialist leaders in Germany, led by Oskar Lafontaine, broke with the German social democracy.

Another example is the pressure that British unions put on the Labour party to take a different path from the one adopted in the Blair years: they threatened to support more consistent leftist alternatives. In an article in the Independent of April 1, 2014, the leader of the biggest British union, Unite, warned Labour that he would start an alternative workers party. Despite the adoption of swinish neoliberal capitalism in Israel, we have not seen a similar movement within the Histadrut. Despite its unionization initiative (something new in the Histadrut, which used to work with employers only) this labour organization has remained conservative, intimately connected to the establishment. Ofer Eini, who has led the Histadrut in the past nine years, was responsible for forming Netanyahu’s ruling coalition in 2009 and has distanced the Histadrut from anything politically or socially progressive.

The Histadrut absented itself from the 2011 social protest movement, which challenged the government’s neoliberal agenda and demanded a change in priorities. Eini backed MK Shelly Yachimovich when she gained the Labour Party leadership. Rather than create a new leftist alternative, Yachimovich and the protest-movement leaders who joined her in the Knesset attempted to separate the struggle for social justice from the issue of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. This tactic disintegrated the protest movement and cost Yachimovich the party leadership. It also created an ideological vacuum, with the absurd result that we now see union members entering the Likud.

To assume that there is no alternative to the Likud in the political arena is to forfeit in advance the battle over the form of Israeli society.

There is indeed a new trend to unionization in Israel. This is refreshing, and I have no intention here of detracting from its value. At the same time, it is a mistake to see a workers committee or trade union as the be-all, end-all. When organized workers take a narrow view of caring for a small interest group, joining racist right-wing elements, they become what are known as “yellow unions” in workers’ movement jargon – enemies of social change.

It would be fitting instead for unions to form a new social, economic, and political agenda, a central pillar of which would be equality between Arab and Jewish workers, the fight against corruption, opposition to occupation and wars, and a clear preference for social welfare. The mistrust felt in Israeli society toward the corrupt political leadership, especially given the coalition parties’ support for an anti-worker and anti-social line, can be fertile ground for a new political direction, protecting the working class and giving it a positive horizon.

Assaf Adiv in National Director of the Independent Trade Union Centre WAC MAAN

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Yair Lapid had hardly settled into his Knesset seat before the Finance Ministry declared war on the ultra-Orthodox, on the Histadrut, on the monopolies – in short, a world war. What the father Tommy began with Netanyahu in 2003, the well-disciplined son is completing ten years later, fulfilling his father’s directives. Tommy Lapid has passed away, but Netanyahu has received renewed strength to continue the process he began as finance minister in Ariel Sharon’s government. Netanyahu paid a heavy price when he lost the general elections to Ehud Olmert, but a man like Bibi doesn’t despair – especially when another Lapid arrives to restore his self-confidence.

The “open skies” agreement (increasing foreign competition in the airlines industry) was the real test. Ynet and Army Radio, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, Avigdor Lieberman’s trial, Nochi Dankner’s tribulations – they are all troublesome and cause us to despair. But Netanyahu and Lapid are promising us a break from such things via cheap flights abroad. They also promise cheap electricity, cheap phone calls, and cheap cars. When their world war ends, everything will be cheaper. All we need to do is privatize the Israeli economy and open it up to competition, and all will be smooth and efficient.

Cheap things cost a fortune

The problem is, cheap things are expensive. Netanyahu privatized the pension funds, and workers’ payments now flow straight into Dankner’s hands. He privatized the health services, and now reasonable health care and medicines are impossible to get without some kind of “complementary” private health insurance. He privatized welfare, and the number of those living in poverty grew. He privatized the dairy concern Tnuva and the price of cottage cheese rose. He also privatized Israel’s national shipping company Zim and handed it to the Ofer brothers, and since then it’s been suffering losses. Ten years have passed, and social inequality rates in Israel are now among the highest in the western world – but Bibi and Lapid continue their self-appointed task as if nothing has changed and the Israeli public is stupid.

Cheap things cost a fortune because behind every privatization and every move to open the market to competition lies the principle of “efficiency”, which means reduction of personnel, which means unemployment. For example, in El Al, like other airlines, some 82% of expenditures are fixed costs such as fuel and ground services. The remaining 18%, the cost of wages, is where cost-cutting measures can be implemented. Competition is between those who manage to get more out of fewer workers for lower wages. Thus El Al will cut back on its workforce by one third, and – in simple terms – some 2000 workers will be sent home.

The aim is to obtain cheaper workers, and competition between workers is a cruel game. Nobody can compete with Chinese workers. China is becoming an economic superpower because it hires its workers at slave wages. In this way, entire industries have been wiped out around the globe, particularly in the US but also in Israel. And when it is impossible to “relocate” factories outside the national borders, foreign labor is imported to replace local workers. This is what has occurred in the construction industry, agriculture and homecare, under the pretext that Israelis don’t want to do this kind of work.

It is clear that the first step after privatization is dismissal of workers, and new firms make certain that their workers have no union support. Thus the minimum wage has become, in practice, the maximum. One must work in one and a half full-time positions to earn the average wage. Industrial workers labor 12-hour shifts at minimum wage just to reach NIS 8,000 a month ($2200). And to complete the picture we need to add contract labor, free-lancers, and those with “personal” contracts – all lack employment security and protection of their rights. This is the sorry situation in which some two million workers in Israel find themselves.

Who isn’t good at management?

The Finance Ministry asserts that the government isn’t good at management, so we need professionals with initiative who are willing to take risks in order to lead the economy. It also asserts that dismissing workers creates new jobs elsewhere. For example, the “open skies” agreement will lead to the dismissal of some 2000 El Al workers, but also to an increase in tourists, which will create thousands of jobs in the tourist industry. The textile industry was also wiped out by the removal of import duties, backed by the claim that this would lead to growth in the industry within a decade. But the truth is, growth benefited only a few and the vast majority does not benefit at all. Meanwhile thousands of women in the peripheral regions, in the south and in the Arab towns in particular, became unemployed.

After years of trial, it’s worth asking how the tycoons have proved they know how to manage the economy better than the state. Zim is sinking under debt and is requesting a write-off; Dankner is facing bankruptcy after taking control of an empire of some 40,000 workers; Tshuva, Leviev, Zisser, Ben Dov and others took risks with public money and refuse to pay for losses out of their own pockets. Teva, meanwhile, makes profits of billions, yet pays zero tax. But when they are nevertheless asked to pay something for the sake of the homeland they take umbrage and move to London, the favorite tax haven.

Lapid tells us there are three factors responsible for the harsh social situation: the ultra-Orthodox, the Arabs, and Alon Hassan, chairperson of the Ashdod Port workers’ committee. Yes, apparently Alon Hassan is the real villain, and Bibi and Lapid have declared war on him too. Hassan likes to eat steak, he employs his own family at the port, he earns NIS 30,000 per month, and he, it seems, is the main cause of the high cost of living. Hassan and the other large workers’ committees are public enemies, which justifies a policy of “targeted liquidation.” Hassan and his ilk must agree to streamlining, viz. privatization, the transfer of the port to some tycoon or other. He must also agree to the employment of contract workers instead of regular workers. Thus, instead of Hassan and his friends earning NIS 30,000 per month, some capitalist will pocket millions – after all, the capitalist deserves it, he took the risk at the expense of the public.

The principle is clear: all those earning NIS 30,000 must be wiped out to make jobs for those who earn NIS 5000. The profits from Ashdod Port, the Electricity Corporation, the gas and Dead Sea industries will flow into the pockets of a few individuals while the status of workers continues to decline. At least in one area workers and tycoons are equal: neither pays tax – the former because they don’t earn enough; the latter because they “earn” too much. The results are clear – the state loses revenue, public services are retrenched and privatized, poverty increases, and no social safety net remains to shore up the less fortunate.

Despite the huge social protest of summer 2011, the tycoons, settlers and their representatives in the government continue to scorn the public. The economic system is bankrupt. It is built upon lies, fraud, and the destruction of the democratic process.

Lapid’s war is not the struggle of working people but the war of the tycoons. Ishay Davidi, the tycoon preparing to take over El Al and send so many workers home, is a significant contributor to Lapid’s political party. So when Lapid breaks El Al workers and declares war against them, who is he really acting for? For the workers? Or for those who funded his path to the Knesset?

– Translated from the Hebrew by Yonatan Preminger

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