From
Challenge # 81 September-October 2003
Three NGO's Discuss the Labor Market in Israel
Transcription: Orit Sudri and Ra'afat Hattab
Editing: Roni Ben Efrat
On July 21 about 80 people
gathered in Jaffa's Baqa Center to watch Video 48's most recent
documentary, A Job to Win. The audience included social activists,
leftists and Arab laborers from Galilee, who work at construction sites in
the Tel Aviv area and sleep in nearby hostels. The film was followed by a
panel discussion, featuring Dani Ben Simhon of the Workers Advice Center (WAC
– Ma'an in Arabic), Ella Keren of the Hotline for Migrant
Workers, and sociologist Yossi Dahan, who chairs the Adva Center.
The event was special in two ways: First, it was
organized by WAC and the Hotline together as part of their ongoing
cooperation (see the
Joint Position
Paper). Second, it provided the Israeli left with a forum for
exploring the labor market, a topic that receives little exposure. The
participation of the Arab workers lent an air of urgency. Foreign workers
were also invited, but they did not attend.
Dani Ben Simhon:
The film A Job to Win
brings the policy of the unholy trinity –government, contractors and
personnel companies – into focus. They import foreign workers into
construction while creating chaos in the local labor market. For Arab
society, this chaos signifies social and economic devastation, which came
to explosion, for instance, when the Arabs in Israel joined the Intifada
in October 2000.
Over the last 18 months, WAC has been bringing Arab
workers back to the construction sites. In addition to the 600 already
mobilized (and I use this military term on purpose), I have here a list of
another thousand who want to work.
Some of you may raise an eyebrow at the word
"mobilize". Well, believe me, in order to survive today in construction,
you have to have military discipline. Otherwise you won't get past the
meat-grinder.
Sitting here tonight are dozens of workers from
Galilee who are living away from their families. They stay for the week in
youth hostels. Many are older men with children. They sleep six to a room
in order to get up at dawn each morning and work until 6:00 or 7:00 in the
evening, and sometimes that's not enough. As long as there's an option to
import cheap labor, their jobs are insecure.
The competition with so-called manpower agencies is
impossible. This week I visited a construction site in Haifa that is
looking for workers. The project manager says to me, "Look, workers who
come through WAC cost me between 45 and 48 shekels an hour, gross. A
worker from a manpower agency costs 18 shekels an hour, gross. Why should
I take the expensive ones?"
Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu talks about a
need to change the culture of work. At Finance they use pretty words like
"making the labor force more flexible". The meaning isn't just that they
want a worker devoid of organization and rights, but they want to
transform each one into an individual up against the system. Can you
imagine what it's like for an individual worker to stand alone against a
gigantic concern like Solel Boneh? The machine is well-oiled, powerful,
frightening. It's a war.
Within this war, the film of Video 48 brings the
workers to speech. WAC devotes itself to making them heard. We stress that
there are, in this country, workers who want to work with dignity, and
this is their basic right.
Ella Keren:
This film is very sad. It
focuses on the heavy price that local workers are paying, and less on the
viewpoint of the foreign workers. We at the Hotline put more stress on
this viewpoint, and in this we definitely complement each other's work.
The film is an eye-opener. It brings the issue home with enormous power,
even for me – and I know the subject. I think it hits on the essential
topics that concern the labor market, but it doesn't do enough to present
the responsibility of the government, the official policies. In my view,
the problem is not so much the contractors as it is the policy makers, who
let the contractors get what they want. And what they want isn't workers,
it's slaves. The government has three major ways of doing this, which
together turn the foreign workers into slaves:
1. Chaining worker to employer. You may not
know this, but every foreign worker who arrives in this country is tied by
name to a specific employer. He belongs to "John Doe" from X Street, at
construction site Y, and this information is inscribed in his passport. If
the worker is caught at a different site from the one that is written, or
with a different employer – and no matter what the reason, whether it's
his own wish or that of his boss, who might have "rented him out" or "sold
him" or, in nicer words, "transferred him" – no matter, in the view of the
authorities, the worker has violated his work permit. He is considered
illegal and deported.
2. The law is applied not to the bosses, but
only to the workers. By law, foreign workers have the same rights as
local ones, but the state does not interfere in their job conditions. It
doesn't check that the bosses pay minimum wage, allow days of rest and
illness – all the components of workers' rights as protected by law. If
the state enforced the rights of all workers, the bosses wouldn't find it
worthwhile to prefer foreigners.
According to data from recent research by the Labor
Ministry, more than 80% of the foreign workers do not make minimum wage.
In our view, even this figure is too conservative. In a situation where
the state absents itself, foreign workers have a competitive advantage
over Israelis precisely because the bosses can enslave and exploit them.
3. Mass deportation. The Sharon government
has taken on the task of deporting 100,000 workers. It's set up a
Deportation Administration, though it uses the more sterile name of
Migration Administration. That is the government's only contribution to
reducing unemployment. The operation is carried out, of course, amid gross
and ugly violations of human rights, including the deportation of people
who were fired and others who were brought here as part of a swindle, in
order to collect the thousands of dollars they paid to come.
I've singled out these
three components of government policy, to show that it isn't a
coincidence, rather the result of a well-oiled apparatus, that Israeli
workers drop from the labor market. Until now 20,000 foreign workers have
been deported, but the unemployment of local workers continues to rise.
In such a situation, it's easy to develop a hatred
of foreigners. It's very important for the workers, precisely them, to
understand that the foreigners too are victims of government policy, just
as they are.
I appreciate and acknowledge WAC's work in getting
600 workers into regular jobs. I know this has been a very difficult task,
but there's also something Sisyphean about it, like trying to empty the
ocean with a teaspoon. We need to think about long-range actions that will
complement each other.
First, WAC's struggle must be backed by political
and social pressure, in order to change the policy that creates this
situation. I also think that construction and other forms of manual labor
must not remain the only option for Arab workers. When they concentrate in
this occupation, their sector becomes very vulnerable. (See
response below. - Ed.)
Yossi Dahan:
There aren't many films in
this country about workers and their life. I saw A Job to Win
today for the second time, and the most moving part was the ending, where
food is prepared at dawn. It makes concrete in a very human way what it
means to go out to a day's work. I think the film does something else as
well, which I also heard from you: it exposes the lie that people don't
want to work.
Something very demonic is happening here. We are
witnessing an attack on the welfare state by means of foreign workers. The
government says: What's the problem? We have here X-number of unemployed
and an equal number of foreigners. Let these come here and those go there.
A little game of musical chairs and everything will be in order.
It's clear that this is a lie. As you saw in the
film, employers aren't interested in Israeli workers. Never in their lives
have they had a bonanza like the foreign workers, and they aren't about to
give it up. In our Adva Report on the foreign workers, by the way, which
gives a lot of data, it says that Israel has the biggest proportion of
foreign workers in the world after Switzerland. (Dr. Adrianna Kemp and Dr.
Rivka Reichman "Foreign Workers in Israel," June 2003 [Hebrew] <
www.adva.org/ivrit/taasuka.html>.)
Between a fourth and a fifth of the labor power in
the economy consists of unorganized foreign and local workers, employed in
subhuman conditions, defenseless on the job, with a shriveled basket of
rights. When we look at this secondary labor market, as sociologists call
it, we see – as in Marxist vocabulary – that an enormous army has been
created, an ever increasing proletariat of rightless workers. The moment
there’s an army of people ready to work at any price, the time is ripe for
capitalists to make a killing.
I'd like, though, to discuss some of the political,
ideological aspects of bringing in foreign workers.
The policy of chaining worker to boss, which Ella
talked about, hardly exists in other countries. It is done for reasons of
ideology. The state of Israel didn't want to get into the business of
importing foreign workers. It was very concerned, and still is, that this
would damage the national and Zionist character of the state. It was
concerned that a large minority of foreign workers would arise here, as
with the Turks in Germany. That would threaten the state's Jewish
character. It did everything it could, therefore, to eliminate its
involvement in all that concerns foreign workers. This is what's behind
the chaining of worker to boss. The boss is the one who's responsible for
the worker, and he has to "check him out" like equipment and afterwards
"check him in." This is part of the "newspeak". Officially, the boss is
accountable for the worker throughout his stay – and why? Because if the
state were officially responsible, the workers who are here, or
their families, could claim the status of residents and later of citizens.
For this reason Israel has refused to sign conventions with the workers'
countries of origin. This is also why it's chosen to allow the import of
workers only from certain countries, whose inhabitants have less potential
for immigrating permanently.
On the question of "who's to blame," I differ with
Ella. Of course the government is guilty, but the government and its
policy makers are in thrall to the owners of capital. When it comes to
foreign workers, therefore, the economic solution and the moral solution
are bound together. Enforcement of the labor laws, raising the cost of the
foreign worker to the employer, would benefit those foreign workers who
are living here while stopping the import of more. Such a measure would be
right, both economically and morally.
Response by Abed al-Majid from
Majd al-Krum
I represent 60 workers who've come from Galilee to work in
the Tel Aviv area and stay here during the week. In our view, this very
fact is living proof that the government is lying when it claims there are
no workers. Here we are, ready for the sake of decent work to leave our
villages and families.
I want to stress that the foreign workers aren't
our enemies. They are oppressed just as we are. We feel we are part of the
same circle.
Concerning the idea that we should seek work in
occupations beyond manual labor, allow me to say that I am a university
graduate. I received a Master's in Biology in 1994. All my attempts to
find a job in my field have come to nothing. That is why I've been forced
to work in construction. As an Arab academic, I am oppressed, but now it
seems that as an Arab laborer I'm at the bottom of the ladder, the kind of
worker who is wanted least. All that we are asking is to work in
construction. Is that so much? n
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