Court Gives Back-to-work Order to Bezek Employees

The 9,000 employees of Bezek, bowing to a court order, called off their three-day strike that was to have begun Tuesday morning.

The strike by the government-owned telecommunications corporation, would have affected Israel’s electronic media, telephone and telegraph communications.

A Tel Aviv district court judge issued nostrike orders at midnight Monday, complying with the request of Bezek’s management who claimed the walkout was unwarranted and illegal.

The court, in fact, proved more amenable than Attorney General Yosef Harish.

Harish refused a request Monday by Communications Minister Gad Ya’acobi to invoke emergency regulations to prevent the strike.

Harish said it would be a misuse of the regulations because the walkout would not constitute an emergency.

The workers are demanding a 5 percent pay increase that was granted to all other public sector employees.

But the Treasury balked, on grounds that Bezek workers received a generous bonus last year, not paid to others.

Bezek, though government-owned, is an autonomous company that took over telecommunications from the Communications Ministry five years ago.

It negotiates its own labor contracts and claims it has been able to pay employees efficiency bonuses they would not have received as part of the government bureaucracy.

Labor unrest continued to simmer in Israel, however, as tugboat crews struck on Tuesday at Haifa and Ashdod, the two largest ports, in a wage dispute.

Ha’aretz, meanwhile, did not appear on newsstands Tuesday because the editorial staff was on strike, demanding extra pay for working with video display terminals.