The Reader’s Forum

Editor, Jewish Daily Bulletine:

We should be greatly obliged to you for circulating the following statement with regard to the cable of your Palestine correspondent conerning the Revisionist-Histadruth dispute in Haifa, published in your London Bullein of January 15th.

Your correspondent says:

“The cause of the trouble is the refusal of a Revisionist contracting firm to sign a collective agreement regulating terms of employing building labor which has been signed by 32 Jewish contractors in Haifa, with the sole exception of this firm. The Histadruth thereupon declared a strike on the building in the Hadar Hacarmel, on which the firm was engaged, and on which both members of the Histadruth and Revisionists were engaged to make up the shortage of hands.”

We beg to remark:

On the building in question there were seventy Revisionists and only three Histadruth members working. As the contractor is himself a Revisionist and your correspondent admits it, it is absolutely inconsistent with logic and reality to pretend that he only engaged Revisionists to make up shortage of hands: he obviously engaged 70 Revisionists, because he wanted to have Revisionist workers.

Secondly and still more important: it is obvious that, when there are 70 Revisionists and only 3 Histadruth people working on a building. the Histadruth has no right to “declare a strike” on that building. Such a strike had obviously nothing to do with the working-men’s interests and was simply another attempt by the Histadruth to proclaim its domination over the whole field of labor-development in Palestine, in order to deprive Revisionists of any possibility

See P.S.

to get work even there, where the employer is a Revisionist willing to engage them and them only.

Yours faithfully,

M. Schechtman.

P.S We have just received additional information concerning the Haifa case, from which it appears that

1.The exact number of workmen employed on the building in question was 67 Revisionists and 3 Histadruthmen.

2. All the Revisionists were organized workers belonging to the “Irgun of the Revisionist and Betar working-men.”

3. They all worked at the same wages as those generally established on the labor-markket of Haifa and accepted also by the Histadruth.

4. At the meeting called by the Haifa Communal Council in order to try and settle the conflict the representative of the Histadruth, Mr. Shapiro, openly stated that the “strike” proclaimed by the Histadruth on the building in question had no economic reasons whatsoever and bore therefore a purely partisan character.

5. Apart from beating and wounding Revisionists (we have before us a list of 16 names mostly indicating the nature of wounds and the list is not full), the Histadruth adherents also attacked Hockglueck’s Restaurant in Hadar Ha-Carmel which is the usual eating place of the Brith Trumpeldor members: all the window-panes, the furniture and the sideboards were broken and the place looked like after a pogrom.

6. Besides, members of the Histadruth went up the Carmel mountain and demolished important parts of buildings which were being built by the same Revisionist contracting firm on behalf of Messrs. Segal and Finkelstein.