Israel was in the throes of two major strikes today affecting her communications at home and abroad. A strike for higher wages by 1000 civil aviation workers this morning suspended all traffic at Lod Airport except for military flights and those bringing in immigrants. The airport shut-down began at 6 a.m. (local time) today. Several airlines managed to get flights off the ground before the deadline.
A wildcat strike of postal engineers employed by the Communications Ministry went into its second day with no settlement in sight. Israel’s television screens were blacked out and both international and local telephone services were threatened with break-downs as workers refused to make repairs.
The aviation workers are demanding wage hikes of IL 100-150 a month which the government has rejected as inflationary. The workers called a strike when government representatives failed to show up at an arbitration session. They rejected Transport Minister Shimon Peres’ plea that they return to work. Yitzhak Ben Aharon, secretary general of Histadrut told a meeting of the labor federation’s central committee today that the government was solely to blame for the strike.
A Tel Aviv labor court was scheduled to rule today on a government request to fine the strike leaders for their failure to heed an earlier back-to-work order by the court. Twenty-two members of the engineers’ workers council balked at the order. The labor court declared that it would not sanction resumed negotiations until there was compliance with its order.
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