The Histadrut is trying to hold down demands by a number of professional trade unions for a reopening of their contracts which limit them to a 22 percent salary increase in the wake of the end of the doctors’ strike.
Spokesmen for the engineers, academics, nurses and technicians have said they would have been prepared to remain silent if the doctors had been granted a small increase above the 22 percent limit. But with the reports that the doctors have won a 60 percent increase, they say they now have no alternative but to demand new increases.
They say that the large extra increase represents a breach by the government of the overall work contract. “If the party of the first part (the government) breaks the agreement, then we, as the party of the second part, are also entitled to say the agreement is no longer valid.” Histadrut spokesmen have said in the past that it would not prevent unions from demanding increases if the employers yielded to one group.
But Yisrael Kessar, head of the Histadrut Trades Union department, said that the economic situation in general, and the good of the country, must also be considered. “That (the new demands) is one thing. It is another to make an effort to save the economy. We will do that. It is also for the good of the workers,” he said.
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.
