Trading Tanks for Workers

ON APRIL 11, 2003, Ruth Sinai of Ha'aretz uncovered a deal between the Israeli military industry (Ta'as) and Turkey: the latter granted Ta'as a contract to upgrade 170 Patton tanks for $687 million. This is the biggest arms-export deal in the history of Israel's Defense Ministry. It will undoubtedly strengthen the close strategic relationship between the two countries.

The blessing is a mixed one, however. It is accepted practice that when states make arms deals, the seller compensates the buyer in an arrangement known as an "offset". In this case, Israel, the seller, has committed itself to buying goods or services from Turkey worth $800 million over a period of 20 years. Like many third world countries, however, Turkey has little to offer Israel except water and cheap labor – the hottest item in the Israeli construction market.

Israel intended at first to buy water. Its requirements could have reached $50 million per year, but the Ministry of Finance decided that the price was too high. Israeli businessmen, seeking to strengthen relations with Turkey, put pressure on Ta'as and government officials to compensate the Turks by importing construction workers. Unemployment in Turkey is 10.8% (plus an underemployment rate of 6%). Construction workers in Turkey earn $200 a month. In Israel, such a worker, it was said, could earn $700 – or more with overtime.

The Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers discussed the issue on November 25, with the Workers Advice Center (WAC) taking part. According to the Finance and Interior ministries, the decision to import Turkish workers had come from the Prime Minister's Office in February. Ariel Sharon had blessed the clandestine deal; in April, 800 workers had arrived. Circumventing normal procedures, Sharon's decision was a major departure from official policy, as we shall now see.

AT THE END of 2002, after pressure from the Ministry of Finance, the government decided that the construction industry could supply its needs from the pool of migrant workers already in the country, as well as from local labor. It stopped issuing permits for the import of new workers. This policy became known by the infelicitous term, "Closed Skies".

As part of "Tanks for Workers", however, a private Turkish construction firm named Yilmazlar (operating in Israel since the mid-90's) got permits for 800 workers despite the Closed Skies policy – and without having to follow standard procedures. A senior source told Ruth Sinai that the company then phoned contractors whose applications for import permits had been turned down, offering workers – with a stiff agent's fee attached. (Ha'aretz April 11.)

In the Knesset meeting of November 25, committee chairperson Ran Cohen asked the Ta'as representatives whether they were talking about 800 workers only. Tali Friedman, responsible for reciprocal agreements in the military industries, clarified that 800 workers would not be enough. Israel, she said, will need to import thousands more in order to fulfill its commitments. It will need to put $40 million annually into the Turkish market for a period of 20 years.

We may make a simple calculation. If the annual wage of a Turkish worker is $8400, then Israeli firms will need to employ, on average, 4,762 Turkish construction workers each year for the 20 years.

Turkey is not the only state with which Israel has reciprocal deals. India and China are on the list. On the day after the discussion in the Knesset Committee, an article appeared in Ha'aretz entitled "Mongolia's foreign minister has a small request: a quota of foreign workers" (Dalia Shehori, November 26). The Turkish divergence is likely to become the norm. If that happens, the import of migrant workers will have become a goal in itself. Million-dollar deals will take precedence, even if this means abandoning local workers – especially Arabs, who may be forced to take to the skies themselves.

Special Exceptions for Yilmazlar

The neat arrangement between Israel and Turkey appears in a more sinister light when one looks into Yilmazlar. WAC presented a document to the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers, making serious charges against the company. WAC based these charges on testimonies from workers who ran away from Yilmazlar (see box, p.12). According to WAC:

1. Workers receive their wages without any wage slip and without any reference to the number of hours they have worked. Wages are paid directly to their bank accounts in Turkey, making it difficult for them to check the sum. In addition, there is a time lag of two months before the wages are paid. This procedure is illegal. Israeli law stipulates a fine of 40% of the wage per month on employers who fail to pay on time.

2: The company breaks the minimum wage law (18 shekels or NIS – about $4.00 – per hour). It does not abide by the collective agreements in the construction industry, although these agreements include migrant workers. According to WAC's calculations, the Turkish workers make NIS 12 – 15 per hour.

3: The company retains the workers' passports. The worker keeps only a photocopy. Israeli law forbids a company to confiscate the passports of its employees.

4: Workers' living conditions do not comply with the law concerning the employment of foreign workers.

ACCORDING to Sigal Rozen of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, the Ministry of Trade has been receiving complaints against Yilmazlar since 1999. These did not affect the Turkish and Israeli decision, however, to give this company the privilege of profiting from the deal. In response to WAC's accusations, the Ta'as representatives at the Knesset committee claimed that both Ta'as and the Turkish government had thoroughly checked Yilmazlar. The Turks, they said, had submitted a report confirming their satisfaction. Yet Ta'as and Turkey are interested parties. Officially, the body that ought to check the complaints is Israel's Employment Authority. Even here there is a problem, however. Because Yilmazlar has the PM's blessing, it seems unlikely that the Employment Authority will take effective measures. Pending a truly independent investigation, the company will continue obtaining permits that, in effect, enable it to violate the same laws over and over.

WAC's charges point to another special privilege enjoyed by Yilmazlar. In 2002, human rights organizations criticized the practice of binding migrant workers to a company by taking their passports. In response, the Knesset amended the law. A worker who leaves his job now has the right to find work elsewhere, on condition that his new employer get a visa for him from the Ministry of Interior. In this way the worker can maintain legal status. WAC has discovered, however, that this law is not enforced in the case of Yilmazlar. Here is the testimony of D (his full name is with WAC), who tried to help workers who had left Yilmazlar to find jobs elsewhere:

"I work in another company, and I know very well what happens to Turkish workers in Israel. When workers who'd left Yilmazlar came to me, I suggested they get new passports from the Turkish consulate in Tel Aviv (since Yilmazlar had confiscated them – M.F.), and then I would help them contact another company that would get them visas. Even with new passports, though, there was no way to get new work permits for workers who'd been with Yilmazlar. The Interior Ministry in Haifa told me that workers from Yilmazlar come with a special visa, and the option for them is either to continue with the company or to return to Turkey.

"Another thing. Other companies get fined large sums nowadays for confiscating employees' passports. Not Yilmazlar. When the surveillance unit catches a Yilmazlar worker who holds only a photocopy of his passport, the managers sort things out and the matter is closed."

In 2002, as said, the government decided to "close the skies" in order to re-open jobs to local workers, including Arab laborers who had been displaced by cheap, unorganized migrant labor. It has not stood by its decision. On the contrary, it manages the labor market in construction like a national mafia. With one hand it recently expelled some 50,000 "illegal" migrant workers – that is, people who tried to escape exploitation, going underground – and now it lays the groundwork for bringing in thousands of cheap, exploitable "legal" ones. n

Testimonies of the Yilmazar Employees

Khitam Na'amneh

Below are extracts from the testimonies of Yilmazlar workers who came as part of the "Tanks for Workers" deal. They have requested that we do not reveal their names.

A: "I approached Yilmazlar in Turkey when I heard there was a chance of working in Israel. They made us sign contracts on which no wage was mentioned. I agreed after they promised us that the wage of every worker would be at least $700 per month, and that if we were ready to put in additional hours we could earn a monthly wage of $1000-$1200. When we arrived in Israel, they made us sign a document in Hebrew at the airport; I don't know what was written on it. I signed because we were under pressure and I didn't want to cause problems.

"For the first two months they didn't pay us at all, except NIS 500 for ongoing expenses. This was the same for all the company's workers. Only after two months, my wife in Turkey told me that $518 had been put into my bank account. The next month I received a similar sum. Together with the NIS 500, that comes to $600-$650 for a month of at least 250 hours' work. We work ten hours a day, six days a week, and sometimes also on Saturdays. I have no way of knowing how many hours they record, but I feel they are simply not writing down work hours – in practice they are forging the list of hours."

B: "I came with another group. The sign-up procedure and the promises about wages were similar. When we arrived at the building site it became apparent that no living quarters had been arranged. They put us in containers, eight people to each. There is no hot water, and the washrooms are inhuman. The food is tasteless and always the same: in the morning, bread and cheese and jam, and in the evening, potatoes, beans and rice.

"Worst of all are the relations with the managers and supervisors. At 4:30 in the morning all the workers are awakened in order to get to the site by 6:00. A supervisor demands that the workers be back at the containers every night by 10:00, including Fridays and Saturdays. They allow us to watch television only between 9:00 and 10:00, and even then the supervisor determines which program we watch. At 10:00, they turn off the television and make us turn off the lights as if we were in prison."

C: "I work with B. The relations at work are humiliating and terrible. I work in ceramics. In this line of work, there is always someone who helps the professional, bringing him material and assisting. Here they make us all work alone. A supervisor forbids us to smoke or talk on the mobile. If they catch you, you lose one hour of work.

"Because wages aren't paid on time and are lower than what was promised, and also because of the oppression and humiliation, we decided to leave the company. Our passports are in the company offices, though. We are workers without passports. At any moment the police might catch us and take us to jail. Also, we receive threatening phone calls, demanding that we return to work with Yilmazlar. We run from place to place in order to avoid the police. Our attempts to approach another company for visas have also failed."

WAC unites Arab and migrant workers

A group of Arab workers organized by WAC labors at the same building site as a group of migrants from Turkey. They have forged a relationship of solidarity and cooperation. Through their affiliation with WAC, the Arabs receive full social benefits according to collective agreements in the construction industry. The Turkish migrants, for their part, arrived in Israel within the usual framework of indentured servitude and escaped their first employers. Under threat of arrest and deportation, they negotiated for a wage like that prescribed by collective agreement: 25 shekels per hour. Only after achieving this did they agree to work for their new company, Solel Boneh, which went and got new work permits for them.

Solidarity between local and migrant workers is a principal goal of WAC. It is the only way to ensure that employers will not succeed in dividing workers, exploiting the migrants in order to destroy the attempts of local workers to stay organized. To preserve workers' rights, all must be organized for united action – without regard to nationality or religion.

Trading Tanks for Workers

Michal Freedman

Special Exceptions for Yilmazlar

Testimonies of the Yilmazar Employees