Some 60,000 Government Workers on Strike, Engaged in ‘job Actions’ or Threatening to Halt Work

About 60,000 government workers were on strike today, threatening to strike or engaged in various “job actions” that disrupted normal work. All are demanding higher pay or the reinstitution of overtime pay or travel allowances which were suspended a; the government sought to reduce expenditures in face of the ongoing economic crisis.

Labor peace returned Friday to the Foreign Ministry where employees ended an escalating series of sanctions after receiving a written promise from Civil Service Commissioner Avraham Natan that their “special status” would be recognized now with commensurate remuneration to follow in due time.

But most of the rest of the bureaucracy is in turmoil. Defense Ministry workers are not paying suppliers’ bills, not opening new bids and not clearing defense materials arriving at ports. The action has spread to New York where the Ministry maintains a procurement mission.

At the Welfare Ministry, some 5,000 employees are refusing to transfer payments to recipient institutions, are not answering correspondence and are threatening a full-scale strike. The Interior Ministry has stopped issuing passports and identity cards and has closed its doors to the public. The 3,500 clerks at the income tax bureau have refused to audit tax returns and have limited the number of taxpayers with problems that they receive daily.

ACTIONS IN VARIOUS MINISTRIES

The country’s 4,000 postal workers are awaiting the outcome of a meeting today before deciding whether to call a general strike that will stop mail deliveries and shutdown post offices. The 3,000 employees at the Agriculture Ministry have frozen payments to farmers, suspended veterinary services and have stopped issuing import and export licenses for agricultural products.

About 3,000 Transport Ministry workers are threatening to halt work tomorrow. That would mean suspension of the issuance of vehicle licenses and other services. At the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2,000 employees are threatening a job action on Tuesday.

The Engineers Association has given notice that its 28,000 members will go on strike January 22. Employees of the government-run Electric Corp. have refused to accept payment of bills and will not answer queries from the public.

The problems at the Foreign Ministry, which seem to be solved for the time being, stemmed from a long-standing demand by staff employees that their pay be equalized with the pay of Massed, the intelligence service. The Ministry staff contends that they do much the same type of work, possess the same qualifications and face the same kind of hazards as Mossad agents, especially on overseas assignment.

FOREIGN MINISTRY EMBARRASSED

Their job action over the last week proved a severe embarrassment. Foreign diplomats were not granted admission to the Ministry. Premier Yitzhak Shamir who holds the Foreign Ministry portfolio and normally works out of that ministry on Thursdays, was forced to receive visitors at the Prime Minister’s Office.

One of them was British MP Greville Janner, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who was told politely that he could not enter the Ministry for an appointment with Shamir. The Foreign Ministry staff had threatened to paralyze Israel’s entire diplomatic establishment before the end of the month unless it received recognition, though the staffers are willing to hold their pay raise demands in abeyance due to the state of the economy.

The recognition was forthcoming in the letter from Natan last Friday to staff committee chairman Shmuel Moyal. Natan promised that once the national economy has been stabilized “serious negotiations” would begin to translate “recognition” into tangible compensation and improved work conditions. Moyal concedes that the Commissioner’s letter was “not much” but it was still “something of a breakthrough” that warned a return to normal.