Internal Israeli union twists and turns

Nathan Newman nathan.newman at yale.edu
Wed Mar 10 16:05:14 PST 1999


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



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