Some Israeli politics
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/479862.html
There's an organization of public-sector workers in Israel called Histadrut, which can call public sector strikes pretty effectively (and apparently does so fairly often). They called one this morning.
These are serious strikes, I've never heard of anything like it. The main phone (Bezeq), electric and water companies won't fix problems, banks are shut down, mail isn't delivered, government hospitals are closed except for emergencies, nothing in the sea ports is being loaded or unloaded, and most disturbingly, garbage isn't collected. Lovely. The airports are also affected. Airplanes already in the air were supposed to land in Ben Gurion today, but four El Al airplanes had to land abroad. Those that did land at Ben Gurion won't have their baggage unloaded until the strike ends. I'd be spitting mad if that happened to me. It kinda did, but this is way worse than what I experienced. Nari's boyfriend was supposed to come this Friday for vacation, but he may have to cancel entirely.
From what I can tell, the strike was called to protest both the government's failures in paying the wages of public employees, and the cuts in wages and layoffs that will result from the 2005 budget. Some government people are saying that Histadrut has been obstructing reforms that would allow for the payments, and blaming the Shas party for allowing corruption in local governments in the past, which created the financial problems. I don't totally understand it, and the article goes into it more.
In any case, this makes the supermarket strikes we had at home look laughably impotent. I should do some research into this type of strike and see how well or how badly it's worked for them and for the country.
There's an organization of public-sector workers in Israel called Histadrut, which can call public sector strikes pretty effectively (and apparently does so fairly often). They called one this morning.
These are serious strikes, I've never heard of anything like it. The main phone (Bezeq), electric and water companies won't fix problems, banks are shut down, mail isn't delivered, government hospitals are closed except for emergencies, nothing in the sea ports is being loaded or unloaded, and most disturbingly, garbage isn't collected. Lovely. The airports are also affected. Airplanes already in the air were supposed to land in Ben Gurion today, but four El Al airplanes had to land abroad. Those that did land at Ben Gurion won't have their baggage unloaded until the strike ends. I'd be spitting mad if that happened to me. It kinda did, but this is way worse than what I experienced. Nari's boyfriend was supposed to come this Friday for vacation, but he may have to cancel entirely.
From what I can tell, the strike was called to protest both the government's failures in paying the wages of public employees, and the cuts in wages and layoffs that will result from the 2005 budget. Some government people are saying that Histadrut has been obstructing reforms that would allow for the payments, and blaming the Shas party for allowing corruption in local governments in the past, which created the financial problems. I don't totally understand it, and the article goes into it more.
In any case, this makes the supermarket strikes we had at home look laughably impotent. I should do some research into this type of strike and see how well or how badly it's worked for them and for the country.
1 Comments:
That is a truly amazing story. That type of strike could be dangerous to public safety & it's hard to tell from the linked story whether it's justified or not. Political heads would roll if something like that happened here!
I hope it ends soon, Love, Mom
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