A Position Paper drafted by Ma'an - The Workers Advice Center (WAC), concerning the Mehalev (Welfare to Work/Wisconsin) Program, and presented at the meeting of Mr. Eli Yishai, Minister of Industry, Trade & Labor with social organizations, on 22 August 2006

WAC: the Mehalev Program is not a Solution for Poverty

A year has gone by since implementation of the Mehalev program began in four centers in Israel, and the position of Ma'an - The Workers Advice Center (WAC) remains unchanged - this program does not provide response to the problems of poverty and unemployment. On the contrary, Mehalev worsens those problems among the weakest strata of the population, the ones chosen to participate in it.

Our position is grounded on a series of meticulous observations in the field and the evidence collected by WAC in three of the program's centers - Nazareth, Jerusalem and Hadera. These endeavors were performed as part of WAC's project "Wisconsin Watch". We also rely on numerous reports and testimonies that reached WAC's offices; the association is handling them in legal terms.

Our conclusion is that the Mehalev program is doomed to fail. To validate this position, we outline below two problematic issues:

1. Privatizing public services - transferring the processing of unemployed people to privately-owned companies, guided primarily by profits, has created an obvious conflict of interests. That situation has defeated the goal of the program announced by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Labor - removing unemployed citizens from the cycle of poverty and bringing them back to the job-market.

The fact that the companies' profits derive directly from reducing the number of people receiving income supplements encourages the companies to do all they can to reduce the list of supplement recipients. It makes no difference to them if unemployed people were successfully absorbed in a permanent job, since it has removed them from the cycle of poverty. As a result, the fate of many participants in Mehalev is that they are thrown out of receiving income supplements into limbo. And the only entities that stand to gain from this are the personnel companies, and state - which has saved itself the payment of income supplements.

2. Unemployment - a government policy - The program is being implemented at a period when the workplaces accessible to the weaker populations are being closed down. Unemployment was not created because people got accustomed to income supplements, but because of the government's methodical policies favoring certain sectors in the economy at the expense of others.

This trend is reflected in policies for introducing flexibility into the job market, which in turn is expressed in employment methods. Among the industrialized nations, Israel is a leader in "importing" foreign workers who replace local ones, and employment via personnel companies - the vast majority of which exploit the workers. These trends affect precisely those professions designated for weaker sections of the population. And these employment methods are among the chief causes of the bleak situation suffered by the lowest socioeconomic strata - exactly the people that the Wisconsin plan aspires to deal with.

Over the past five years, WAC has worked for the placement of workers in jobs in the building and agricultural sectors. It negotiates regularly with the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Labor. The reality that we discovered is women and men who want to work, alongside companies and agricultural farms that do not want to give them work - because this government's policy supplies cheaper workers. Only recently, the government approved the import of thousands of Thai workers for agriculture - a step that closed the door in the face of thousands of Arab women workers who are waiting to be assigned a place of work, and who the WAC is trying to help.

Instead of the government changing its employment policy - by reducing the importing of foreign workers; reducing employment via personnel companies; investing in infrastructures and creating jobs; legislating on employment issues; boosting enforcement of the existing laws (and it's abundantly clear that the 20 inspectors allocated by the Ministry for this goal are not enough) - the government prefers the easy and cheaper option. It absolves itself from responsibility for the unemployed, accuses them of creating the situation they are suffering from, then hands them over as easy prey to the private companies that aim only to make profits at their expense.

We argue that changing the employment policy in a way that can benefit the workers and grant them job security over time, will eliminate the need for intervention by external factors - like the employment bureau and the privately-owned Wisconsin Plan company. The majority of the unemployed will naturally find their way back to the workplace.