The costly 14-week strike at the Ata Textile company, Israel’s largest textile producer, was settled at a midnight session last night in direct negotiations between management and the Histadrut which moved into the deadlock at the insistence of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.
The deadlock revolved around the issue of management’s insistence on the right to hire and fire for efficiency reasons, a point on which the Haifa Labor Council, negotiating for the strikers, refused to yield. The settlement pact provided, in addition to a wage increase, for dismissals on the basis of the existing agreement between the Histadrut and the Manufacturers Association, with a special clause requiring special consideration of specific efficiency problems in each plant.
NOT A ‘VICTORY,’ SAY HISTADRUT OFFICES
The Ata management also agreed to establishment of a pension fund for the workers and an annual bonus but rejected a workers’ demand for increased company payments into social funds.
Histadrut officials, declining to call the settlement a “victory,” said it was the best that could be achieved under existing circumstances. Workers were scheduled to return to their jobs as rapidly as the idle machines could be prepared for resumption of production.
The Histadrut executive took negotiations away from the Haifa Labor Council after Ben Gurion personally intervened with a proposal that both sides accept arbitration, which was accepted by management and rejected by the Labor Council.
The Prime Minister then demanded negotiating authority be taken from the Labor Council, asserting that the violence-marked strike had created a severe shortage of textile yarn and of goods for the general market.
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