Radio and Tv Journalists, Hospital Doctors End Strikes

Two seven-week strikes that inconvenienced the public ended Friday.

Journalists of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) agreed to return to work, capping 51 days of radio silence and television-screen blackout. And the physicians at Kupat Holim sick fund hospitals are back in full force, allowing the hospitals to return to normal after seven weeks of reduced Sabbath schedules.

The journalists’ decision was apparently spurred by the public’s desire for information about the terrorist attack last Wednesday in the Galilee. The journalists had sought salary increases.

The agreement reached Thursday night between the strikers and the IBA directorate calls for the strikers to join arbitration proceedings, with IBA director general Uri Porat postponing his reorganization plans and submitting those proposals to the journalists for their full consideration and comments before any new steps are initiated.

Television viewers are looking forward to the next episode of the “Dynasty” series next week. They were left, more than seven weeks ago, with Alexis and Crystal locked in a blazing house, without knowing who set the blaze and who (inevitably) will save them from the “longest fire in Israel’s history.”

But at least one man said he would not be listening Friday night, when the broadcasts were to resume. Knesset member Avraham Verdiger of the Orthodox Morasha party protested to the Cabinet that resumption of broadcasts comes “precisely as the holy Sabbath begins. Why not wait until the Sabbath ends?” he asked.

The doctors have agreed to end their job action, and the Histadrut management has agreed to institute second shifts in operating rooms and clinics in return for extra salaries for doctors working the extra hours.

The doctors say about 30,000 patients await elective surgery, while the management claims 10,000. But whatever the number, most will now be treated in a matter of weeks.