A Ministerial Committee selected by the Israel Cabinet started today to study various proposals to meet the threat of inflation as a result of the insistence by many leading sectors of organized labor that the Government pay increases in the cost-of-living allowances in July, in cash.
Among the plans to be studied by the committee is one proposed by Finance Minister Levi Eshkol who has been urging that at least part of the boost in cost-of-living allowances be paid in the form of Government savings bonds. Several of the Ministers at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting criticized Mr. Eshkol for airing his bond plan publicly before submitting the details to the Cabinet.
The Mapai Party today was still undecided on the cost-of-living allowance increases. Histadrut, the Israeli Federation of Labor, fears that such payments by bonds will not be acceptable to Israel’s workers. Mapai leaders inside Histadrut believe that leftist agitation will be increased if Mr. Eshkol persists in his bond plan.
A meeting of the Mapai economic committee has proposed a plan whereby workers on lower wage-scales may receive the higher cost-of-living allowances in cash, while others get the increases in bonds. So far, however, both the leftist Ahdut Avodah and the National Religious Party are opposing payments in bonds even to a limited category of workers.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
