Ben Gurion Airport, Israel’s only major international airport, was shut down completely over the weekend by angry workers opposed to the government-ordered ban on Sabbath flights by El Al. “We will not work on Saturdays for foreign companies while the national airline stands idle,” declared Shlomo Azulai, a trade union spokesman.
The workers said the shut-down was not a strike but a demonstration to show the government what would become of Ben Gurion Airport if the ban takes effect in a little more than two months, as ordered by the Cabinet. Airline and airport workers, supported by the employes of Israel’s 13 largest industrial enterprises, are fighting the ban on grounds that it would put financially troubled El Al at a serious competitive disadvantage, resulting in a loss of jobs.
A government-appointed committee estimated losses of about $40 million a year. But the Cabinet, at the urging of Premier Menachem Begin, went along with the Sabbath ban demanded by the Orthodox Aguda Israel party as the price of its continued support of Begin’s coalition government. The workers retaliated by threatening to close down Ben Gurion Airport every weekend to carriers of all nationalities.
The government decided against issuing back-to-work orders on this occasion. “We will not force Jews to work on Sabbath,” Uri Porat, Begin’s press spokesman said. “Whoever doesn’t want to work doesn’t have to work.”
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