El Al Board Recommends Voluntary Liquidation of Airline

The board of directors of El Al voted today to recommend that the government put the State-owned national air carrier into voluntary liquidation. The decision, disclosed by Treasury director general Ezra Sedan, was reached shortly before the El Al workers committees agreed to negotiate for reaching concessions with management to keep the planes flying.

This was a reversal of an earlier refusal to negotiate over terms set by management. But according to Sedan, it come too late. He said he did not know if the board’s decision could still be changed but he presumed that the government could amend the recommendations if it wished.

El Al has been grounded for the past month, following a wildcat strike by flight attendants. If the government accepts the recommendations to liquidate El Al it has the option of organizing a new airline under different conditions or selling El Al to private interests. Several groups of private Jewish investors in Israel and abroad have indicated readiness to purchase the airline if it is put up for sale.

The tortuous negotiations involving the El Al board and management and Histadrut and the dozen or so workers committees representing airline employes, reached an impasse this week. Histadrut had agreed last night to negotiate on the basis of a 10-point “statement of principles” worked out by the board of directors and management. It was promptly accused by the workers of “surrender to management dictation.”

Groups of angry employes broke into the offices of Histadrut deputy director general Israel Kessar at trade union headquarters today charging a “sell-out.” But only hours later, after Sedan’s announcement, the workers committees said they were prepared to negotiate on the basis of the 10 principles.

10-POINT STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES

Under those principles, the air line management would be the sole authority in running the carrier. It would establish salaries, make appointments to various jobs and be in complete charge of day-to-day operations. The workers would be represented by a single committee instead of the multiplicity of committees which hitherto represented ground and flight personnel.

Those committees, acting singly or together, had called about 67 unauthorized strikes against El Al during the last 10 years, causing severe losses. The management formulation also called for dismissal of about 1,000 of the airline’s present 5,000 employes.

Transport Minister Haim Corfu said on Israel Radio today That even if the El Al workers agreed to accept management’s terms, he would recommend liquidation of the airline when the Cabinet meets this Sunday. Ministry aides said there was no way in which El Al could be revived under government ownership.

Some employe sources charged today that the government had no intention of reaching an agreement with the workers because Premier Menachem Begin and his Likud-Herut alliance oppose state-owned or “socialist” enterprises as a matter of ideology.

They suggested that Begin and other Herut leaders readily agreed to the Agudat Israel demand to suspend El Al flights on the Sabbath, regardless of economic losses, in order to exacerbate worker-management disputes, leading to the shut-down and possible sale of the airline to private entrepreneurs, some of whom are longtime Herut supporters.