WAC Panel on Arab Women Workers
Up from Poverty

Michal Schwartz

More than 80% of the Arab women in Israel are outside the labor market. Of these, most have no professional skills. With only one breadwinner or none, their families live in poverty. These women are socially passive. They are given over to despair, frustration, withdrawal and depression.

Three years ago, the Workers Advice Center (WAC-Ma'an) decided to turn to this large group of home-bound women and open the path to work. We singled out agriculture, which could offer thousands of jobs. Our idea was this: if these women bring home paychecks, the additional income will change the economic and social situation in their villages from bottom to top. WAC's activists began combing the northern and western parts of the country, seeking farmers who'd be ready to employ them directly with full social benefits. We organized the women into work teams with vehicles and helped them get started.

On June 14, 2008, their day off, more than a hundred WAC farm-working women, joined by the organization's activists, attended a conference in Nazareth on the topic, "Employment as the Key to Ending Poverty among Arab Women." They came from the villages of Kufr Qara, Baqa al-Gharbiyya, Ara, Kfar Manda, and Tamra, as well as Nazareth. They were joined by panelists and participants from Nazareth, Tel Aviv and Haifa. For the academic women, it was a chance to encounter the workers firsthand and become better acquainted with the WAC Women's Forum, which organized the event. The gathering of so many, most meeting for the first time, inspired a feeling of the power that is possible through organization.

The panel included Arab and Jewish academics and activists. (See box for the list of participants.) They too had given up their day of rest to participate voluntarily in Nazareth. Their readiness was testimony to the interest aroused by the issue of employment for Arab women, a topic about as far from the center of mainstream Israeli concern as it is possible to get. The language barrier was overcome by simultaneous translation.

As moderator of the first panel, I highlighted two big structural obstacles that have limited the number of Arab women in WAC to hundreds, where potentially there are thousands.

First, among the 68,000 persons employed in Israeli agriculture (the number includes the farmers), 28,000 are from East Asia, mainly Thailand. Having paid thousands of dollars under the table for visas, the Thais arrive deep in debt and utterly dependent on their employers, to whom they are chained. When their unpaid overtime is figured in, it is estimated that a Thai costs his employer 13 shekels ($4) per hour, whereas the legal minimum is 21 shekels. This makes locals non-competitive. One of our workers asked, "Why must we make do with seasonal labor? Why can't we work permanently?" Assaf Adiv, WAC's National Coordinator, replied that the Thais are the permanent workers. WAC workers are more expensive, so they are hired when the bosses have no choice. There is only one way, he said, to get year-round jobs: WAC will have to succeed in its struggle to stop the importation of workers without rights.

WAC has conducted a long campaign on this issue in the Knesset and the government offices against the farmers' lobby. Just recently, on June 10, the farmers requested permits for an additional 4500. The WAC workers and activists at the Nazareth Conference called on the panel members to oppose this human trafficking.

The Conference highlighted the common denominator between farm workers in Israel and other Israeli working women. Here we come to the second great obstacle facing us. Apart from the 250 farm workers organized in WAC, who receive 3710 shekels per month with a pay slip and social benefits, all other local farm workers, without exception, are employed through middlemen (ra'is). These rake off a third of their salaries, leaving them with 80-100 shekels per day—and no pay slip or insurance.

This cozy arrangement between farmers and contractors has gone on for decades and no one raised a voice in protest—not the Arab women workers, who had no faith in their potential for power, nor the Arab politicians, and no one else. As a result, farm labor got a bad reputation in the villages. Housewives and mothers are reluctant to do it unless poverty compels them.

In recent years, however, it is not only Arab farm-working women who suffer from bad conditions. The method of indirect employment and the manipulation of the worker as a commodity have become a national blight. At first the blight spread to typists and cashiers, food packers and cleaners, Arabs, Mizrahi Jews, immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union—in short, all who live on the country's margins. Today, however, it includes nurses, teachers and academics, people who work as freelancers without rights or job security. She who did not combat the blight in the past, because it did not extend to her sort of people, today pays the price of silence.

WAC's struggle to gain fair conditions for Arab farm workers is not, therefore, a merely sectoral or ethnic one. It is a struggle against the dictatorship of globalized capital and for fair labor conditions. It is a struggle against methods that leave working people in poverty. It is a struggle against a situation where the minimum wage has become the maximum; where, after years of labor, women are still temporaries with neither advancement nor seniority; and where, at age 65 and pensionless, they are condemned to destitution. Against the principle of profits first, WAC places the needs of the worker first, the right to earn with dignity. This is a struggle that touches all. Hence the call for joining forces.

Such were the reasons behind the convening of the Conference in Nazareth. Another was WAC's desire to show the participants its strategy. We do not seek solutions on an individual basis but rather for groups. Although we do get involved in legislation and court cases, we put the stress on union organization. We believe, and we have shown, that women workers are capable of transforming both themselves and the society around them. For this reason, in addition to finding jobs and providing a support network, WAC also operates empowerment groups and courses in union organizing. The greatest empowerment of all is to go to work with organized backing.

Another reason we called the Conference was to foster dialogue between the panelists and the audience. We believe that in such an encounter, each side has something to give and learn. For the workers sitting in the audience, it was no light matter that many of the speakers had made the journey from Tel Aviv. They listened with rapt attention, enjoying every minute. In the second panel, the guests had the chance to hear grass-roots activists Samya Nasser, Wafah Tayara and Leila Suleiman, followed by voices from the wider audience. It was an opportunity for two very different groups, with different mother tongues, to find common ground. The Conference ended with a call to link arms and build a broad-based pressure group toward a mutual goal, so that women will understand that their poverty is no divine decree—but can and must be ended.

The panels

First panel: "Exclusion of the Arab Woman from the Labor Market"

Moderator: Michal Schwartz: Coordinator of the WAC and HPH Women's Forum

Participants:

Nurit Tzur: Head of the Women's Lobby in Israel, which is the largest mainstream women's organization in the country.

Dr. Orly Benjamin: Sociologist at Bar Ilan University and class-conscious feminist. Benjamin does research on working women who remain below the poverty line. See her article in this issue, p. 14.

Attorney Olah Shteiwi: Coordinator of "Women for a Fair Budget."

Ruth Sinai: Reporter for social issues, Haaretz.

Dr. Ktzia Alon: Chairperson of the Department for Women's and Gender Studies, Beit Berl; activist in Akhoti (My Sister).

Second panel: "Arab women workers between a patriarchal society and institutional discrimination."

Moderator: Samya Nasser: Coordinator for the work of WAC/HPH women in Kfar Manda and the northern region.

Participants:

Wafah Tayara: Job-placement Coordinator at the WAC Center in Kufr Qara.

Leila Suleiman: Employment Coordinator of "Hon Enoshi" (Human Capital) at Tamra and Kabul.

Dr. Hannah Safran: Feminist peace activist in Woman to Woman and Lecturer at the Emek Yizreel College.

This second panel reflected activity at the grass-roots level in overcoming the difficulties of women who want to get out of the house and work. Afterwards there was an open discussion with the audience.

Citations from participants

Attorney Ola Shteiwi of the Forum for a Fair Budget:

Economic policy is built for a certain kind of citizen. Women are not in the mind's eye of the policy makers. Two-thirds of those earning minimum wage in this country are women. Therefore, the decision not to raise the minimum wage harms them most of all.

As for Arab women, the state prefers to shrug off responsibility for their miniscule participation in the work force. It does so by calling it a cultural problem. The state ignores the infrastructure that it must create, such as jobs, access to public transportation and day-care centers.

Wafah Tayara, WAC Coordinator in Kufr Qara:

The WAC women have been victimized twice: first, as youngsters, when they were denied a higher education, whether because of financial difficulties or the family's conservative attitude. Second, lacking education they are shoved into jobs under contractors who take a large part of their wages.

At WAC we understand that these women need empowerment in order to raise their status in the society and the family. The women who work through WAC are no longer ashamed of their labor.

Samya Nasser, Coordinator of Women's Empowerment Programs for WAC/Hanitzotz in Galilee:

Work alone is not enough to liberate women, especially under conditions of exploitation and humiliation. But work together with empowerment can open new horizons, enabling them not just to value themselves but to cause society to value them too.

Here with us today are women who have taken part for the last two or three years in lectures and empowerment groups. They are sure of themselves and know their own worth. We are still at the beginning. I call on you who are here to be guides and leaders for the hundreds of women that will walk on the path you have traveled.

Ketzia Alon, Chairperson of Gender Studies, Beit Berl

We women are subject to very strong forces that invade and shape our lives. I think every woman here today is very courageous indeed. She has gone through daily struggles. We live between oppression and depression.

The sense of responsibility is what will enable us to stand on our own two feet. The more a woman increases the amount of responsibility that she takes, the more successful will be her struggle against oppression and depression.

Orly Benjamin, Sociologist at Bar Ilan University and Feminist

There are many reasons for unemployment among Arab women. There is the limited structure of job opportunities, especially in the public sector. There is the absence of solutions for suitable child care during the day. One particularly interesting reason, however, is the extent to which the Arab woman's society supervises the degree to which she keeps the code of family honor.

A great many Arab women, especially those who are married, hesitate to take jobs outside the villages where they live. When women go outside to work, this fact alone is enough for the community to classify them as violating family loyalty.

I want to present two quotes from Arab women who proved strong enough, who dared to ignore the gossip and the harm to their good name. Today they are proud of themselves for what they went through. They are proud of the fact that they were able to become breadwinners and support their children. The women are from Shefa-amra. They went to work as cleaners after deciding that the ability to raise their children with dignity was more important than gossip.

"For fifteen years I cared for the elderly and did house cleaning. …I was much appreciated as a woman who came independently to work and put her children through a university education."

"I encountered many obstacles. People used to look at me differently, saying that I didn’t go out for the sake of work but for other reasons. That would have grounded me completely, but I was strengthened by the need for money to help my children and support the household. This need helped me overcome my feelings."

In sum, the conditions in the economy are extremely harsh, both because jobs are lacking and because the existing ones are exploitative and debilitating. The important thing is not to act alone, rather in cooperation with friends and activists from the various organizations. This way we will not be dependent on particular employers. Together we can think of solutions, and together we can overcome the forces that seek to weaken us, both the forces of the state and the forces of the community. Only common action can help us overcome them.