Trade unionists, bristling with anger over the government’s emergency economic program which is to be imposed by decree, held meetings today to map future job actions, including the possibility of another general strike which, like the one called by Histadrut July 2/3, virtually shut down the entire country for 24 hours.
At the same time, the fear of mass unemployment, dreaded by government and workers alike, seemed to recede, at least for the immediate future. The government Employment Service reported today that 16,425 were jobless last month, an eight percent drop from the number of unemployed the previous month.
The improved job situation was felt throughout the country, including the Haifa area where failure to sell the bankrupt Ata textile mills appears to have doomed nearly 2,000 jobs. But the unemployment rate there dropped 10 percent last month. It rose only in Ofakim, a development town in the Negev.
The Employment Service, in fact, recorded a labor shortage which prevented it from filling some 3,000 job openings. Nevertheless, the number of workers who refused to take jobs offered them by the Employment Service fell last month by two percent and there was a 17 percent drop in the number of work offers passed on to the administered territories because of the shortage of Jewish workers.
DANGER SIGNS AHEAD
But there were some danger signs ahead. The Employment Service reported a five percent decline in the number of job offers last month. Officials of the agency estimated today that this figure alone — independent of the government’s austerity measures and the planned dismissal of civil service workers — indicated a potential economic slowdown.
The dismissal of civil service jobholders is one of the elements of the emergency economic program adopted by a Cabinet majority last Monday and approved by the Knesset on Wednesday. It is necessitated by the sharp curtailment of government expenditures.
According to unofficial reports, about three percent of government employes will be dismissed. No absolute members have been given. But the local press claimed today that about 10,000 civil service workers would be laid off this week.
That news, carried in strident headlines, was hardly welcomed by the Histadrut Executive Committee and the heads of major unions who met jointly and separately today. They are adamantly opposed to the emergency economic program which Histadrut describes as an “unfair, one-sided burden” imposed on wage-earners and salaried workers by executive decrees that by-pass union negotiations, the Knesset and its committees.
UNIONISTS DEMAND SPEEDY, TOUGH ACTION
The trade unionists are particularly angry that the government plans to invoke emergency regulations that are a hold-over from the British Mandate regime to implement its program. The union leaders, at their joint meeting with Histadrut executives, and more violently at their private sessions, demanded speedy, tough action.
Some want to call a new general strike, immediately. Another tactic under discussion is for each union to strike on its own, without waiting for Histadrut approval; and still another would have each union call its members off the job in rotation in different parts of the country.
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.
