Focus: Trade unions in Israel: a resurgence of unionism?

Abstract

18 | International Union Rights | 25/2 FOCUS | TRADE UNION RIGHTS IN THE MENA COUNTRIES The new millennium ushered in a wave of unionising and major labour disputes in Israel. While the country had experienced many protracted labour disputes in the past, this wave was notable for the number of new unionising initiatives and some precedential court decisions which reflected the fact that labour organising was now taking place in a very different legislative, institutional and political context. In some ways, this context was similar to that faced by labour movements around the western world: a reduction in disposable income, wage erosion, the increase in non-standard employment frameworks and growing precariarity, fuelled by outsourcing, deregulation of financial markets, and the influx of migrant labour. In a word, neoliberalisation and the squeeze on middle classes who had been the main beneficiaries of the former neocorporatist regime. These were the same factors that led to the social protest movement of 2011, which took inspiration from movements such as Occupy Wall Street and Los Indignados but attracted incredibly high levels of support and active participation throughout the country. However, the Israeli context also has peculiarities of its own, due to the singular history of the country’s labour movement. Israeli industrial relations are dominated by the General Federation of Labour in Israel, commonly known as the Histadrut. This organisation had a crucial role in facilitating Jewish settlement in British Mandatory Palestine before the State of Israel was established, a role that must be understood in order to appreciate recent developments in Israeli IR. The Histadrut was not established as a labour federation, but as an administrative organisation cooperating with employers in promoting the Jewish settlement project by providing essential services to immigrants; worker representation came later. It went on to own concerns in industry, health, agriculture, housing and construction, finance, and transport, and maintained close links with the government until well into the 1970s. Throughout its history, the Histadrut has grappled with the contradictions that stem from its multiple roles, as a ‘national’ institution taking a ‘responsible’ part in nurturing the economy of the (‘Jewish’) state; as a large employer second only to the state; and as a representative worker organisation, negotiating vis- à-vis the state, public sector employers and, to a lesser extent, private sector employers. This was not a union, but a Jewish, nationalist organisation cooperating with capital to further the Jewish statebuilding agenda, an identity reflected in its relationship with Israel’s Palestinian Arab citizens: Palestinians were unable to benefit from the activities of an organisation whose overarching aim clashed with their own national aspirations; they were granted limited membership in 1959 and full membership with voting rights only in 1965, though membership only tells half the story of discrimination and exclusionary practices. Throughout the 1980s and onwards, the Histadrut continued to dominate as it had done since the 1920s, but a series of developments left it significantly weaker than it was in its heyday around the 1970s. Elections in 1977 brought in a government far more hostile to labour. Liberalisation and deregulation followed in the 1980s and 1990s, including the reduction of subsidies for industry, the removal of protective tariffs and the privatisation of state and Histadrut enterprises. Notably, the National Health Insurance Law of 1995 severed the Histadrut from its HMO and thus, at a stroke, deprived it of its main recruitment tool. By 2003, after the Histadrut’s pension funds were nationalised, the Finance Ministry was able to declare its greatest achievement had been breaking organised labour. By 2006, union density had dropped to about 33 percent, down from around 80 percent in 1981. Nonetheless, the institutions of tripartite neocorporatism are still sturdy and unionising workers can still depend on their support, despite over 40 years of efforts to undermine them. These include the independent labour court system, political norms of collective bargaining, and well-established traditional IR social partners encompassing a wide range of employer organisations and trade unions. Due to its historical role, the Histadrut had had little need to unionise – workers joined because they needed its services – while strong political support for neocorporatism ensured widespread legitimacy for unionism. The decline in this support and...