An 11th-hour wage agreement between the government and Histadrut averted a general strike on Wednesday that would have idled some 400,000 public sector employees.
Negotiators labored into the early hours of the morning to reach a compromise between the Treasury’s offer of an 8 percent wage hike over two years and the trade union federation’s demand for a 12 percent increase.
They finally settled for 11 percent, and at about 3 a.m. local time, the strike was canceled. Workers learned of the settlement from the morning radio news broadcasts.
Several matters remained unresolved, however, as the weary negotiators went home.
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.