With over 93 percent of the ballots counted, the Labor Alignment has emerged the clear victor in Tuesday’s Histadrut elections. It won 54,6 percent of the votes, a drop of about four percent from the 1973 elections. Likud, with 28,8 percent, scored a six percent gain but is still clearly a minority party in the trade union federation. The Democratic Movement for Change (DMC); with 8.2 percent, did slightly better than it appeared yesterday when early returns indicated only seven percent.
The Religious Workers list won 1,8 percent, a 2.5 percent decline from 1973. The Communists, who seemed to have lost a half percentage point yesterday, now have 2,9 percent, a half percent rise. The Independent Liberal Party-Civil Rights movement joint list has only 1,3 percent, a 4.6 percent drop and the Sheli faction scored 1.04 percent, down from 1.7 percent.
Voter turn-out was good. About 860,000 Histadrut members cast ballots, 65 percent of those eligible to vote. Each faction, therefore, required a minimum of 8600 votes to gain representation in Histadrut. That figure eluded the Yemenite list, the Hillel Seidel group, the Black Panthers and the Independent List.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
