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.
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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.