A two-day strike at flag carrier El Al ELAL.TA and two smaller Israeli airlines ended with the government agreeing to pay a higher portion of the airlines' security costs.Ĭar importers and television operators are also in Netanyahu’s sights.įew groups wield as much power as the port workers, as gatekeepers for Israel’s international commerce, however. On April 21 the government approved an open skies deal that liberalises aviation between Israel and Europe and is expected to bring in more foreign airlines and lower air fares. Netanyahu has placed the blame for the high cost of living on monopolies and cartels that prevent competition and began cracking down, starting with the country’s most vital services. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis staged unprecedented nationwide protests in mid-2011 over high housing costs and soaring prices. Netanyahu was reelected in January with a mandate to do whatever it takes to fix the moribund economy, which grew 3.2 percent in 2012, its slowest pace in three years. I am not open to unilateral attempts to breach such agreements.”Īrticulating the government’s position, Finance Minister Yair Lapid said simply: “Let there be war.” NETANYAHU’S MANDATE The unions will not budge, he said: “I am protecting the workers’ agreements that have been signed for tens of years. That they paint me as an extortionist, a problematic person. “I see and hear and read that on the outside they don’t like us, the port workers, and me specifically. “I have no criminal background, and sadly, they point at me in the streets like some mafioso,” he told Israel’s Channel 10. The unions declined to speak with Reuters for this article and referred questions to the umbrella Histadrut labour federation.īut in a rare television interview in January, the head of the Ashdod union Alon Hassan defended the role of collective bargaining and the right to strike, protected by law, and said the port workers were misunderstood. “Labour unions in the ports are very strong, very belligerent, very egotistical and are using their control of a key state property against the state,” said Uriel Lynn, president of the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce. The port unions - possibly the most powerful in the country with just 2,400 workers earning double the average public sector salary - are likely to be severely weakened and may have to make concessions or face layoffs.Īt a time when the middle class is squeezed by slow economic growth and high costs, there is little sympathy for their plight among average Israelis, let alone businessmen. The government, for years unwilling to risk a confrontation that could paralyse trade given that 99 percent of exports and imports are transported by ship, last month pledged to end the monopolies of the two main ports of Ashdod and Haifa.īy introducing private piers to compete with the two ports, service would improve and prices would drop across the board, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israel is betting its economic future on high-tech exports but faces a low-tech bottleneck in state-owned seaports subject to work stoppages and slowdowns because of the enormous strength of their unions.
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