Internal Israeli union twists and turns

[Nathan Newman]

Partly in preparation for a trip through the middle east this summer to
survey workers rights in the region, I've been reading old articles about
the state of unions and workers mobilization.  There are some interesting
agreements that have been forged between the Israeli and Palestinian labor
federations, but the internal twists and turns of the Israeli federation are
also fascinating- especially in relation to political realignments.  A few
years ago the Histadrut (Israeli federation) divested itself from running
the state health plan - a move that has left it terribly in debt today and
shaken a whole range of political and social alliances.

    Most interesting is the fact that in the last Histadrut leadership
election, the labor leadership was elected with the joint support of the
Labor and Likud parties, while the left-leaning Meretz faction teamed up
with the Gesher faction of the Likud.  The "social camp" of this left
economic coalition lost rather badly, but the fact that the race was
structured in this way shows interesting new cleavages within both the
politics and labor struggles of the country.  That David Levy, head of the
Gesher faction, has since defected to the Labour party slate just adds to
the interest.  On the other hand, the Labor-backed candidate Amir Peretz was
one of the earliest Israeli politicians to call for recognition of the PLO
and is a big critic of "Thatcherism" in economic policy.  So it's a really
interesting stew.

Following on the Israel thread earlier, the striking fact is that the
leadership of the Histadrut is leaning left on both economic and peace
issues.

--Nathan Newman