Israel’s Treasury announced here today that, as part of the government’s drive for economy, more than 1,000 employes in 12 large, government-owned companies have been dismissed from their jobs in the last 15 months. The number of dismissals, said the Treasury Department’s spokesman, affected 5 percent of the labor force in those firms owned by the government. In spite of these dismissals, the spokesman added, production by the firms has increased during the period covered by the report.
A series of meetings was under way today in the continuing efforts to hammer out a new economic policy for Israel. There were still serious differences today between the alignment partners — Mapai and Achdut Avodah — as well as between the entire alignment on the one side, and its coalition partners in the Cabinet on the other. One of the major unresolved conflicts is between the alignment and Mapam.
The secretariat of Mapam, which has been offered some concessions in the efforts by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to win Mapam backing for the economic policy, met this morning but failed to reach a decision. A number of Mapam leaders are opposed to the portions of the economic plan outlined by Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir. Inside Mapai itself, there are serious rifts. A meeting of Mapai’s ideological circle last night disclosed that economists on the Hebrew University faculty opposed the Sapir program as one that, they said, fails to meet Israel’s needs.
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