The Arab Labour Force in Israel

The Arab Labour Force in Israel

Every fifth citizen of Israel is Palestinian Arab, and these 1.2 million people are largely excluded from the benefits of citizenship and the national economy. Systematic discrimination by state and general public permeates every sphere of public and private life, including employment and social security.

Israels Poverty Report 2005, published by the National Insurance Institute on August 30, 2006, revealed worrying socio-economic trends for the population as a whole, and for Arab citizens in particular. Sawt el-Amel summarised the information provided by the poverty report as follows (Israels Poverty Report Not Representative for Arab Population, Sept. 5, 2006):[1]

Increase of overall poverty rate: almost 100,000 Israelis (overall population: 7 million) slipped below the poverty line in 2005, more than half of them children;

Disproportionately high child poverty rate: 35% of children in Israel are poor, a record for the developed world. Child poverty has increased by 55% since 1998;

Extreme and growing - discrepancies along ethnic lines: 52% of Arab citizens live below the poverty line as opposed to 16% of Jews; while the poverty rate among Jews has been stable over the past year, the Arab population has seen an increase of more than 2%;

Regional differences in income distribution: the North remains the poorest region in the country; 29% of families and 40% of children in the North are poor; the national average stands at 20.6% and 35.2% respectively;

Widening gap between high and low-income classes: Despite a general improvement of the economy, real wages in sectors such as hospitality and textiles dropped; salaries rose only in positions requiring higher education. Poverty increased in families with only one breadwinner and/or with four or more children;

Alarming increase of working poor: the percentage of working poor grew from 38% in 2002 to 43% in 2005; in 2005, 60% of working poor held full-time jobs.

In 2005, 52% of all Arab citizens inside the Green Line[2] lived below the poverty line, as compared to16% of Jewish Israelis; the public social safety net worked for only 11% of economically disadvantaged Arabs, while it succeeded to lift 47% of Jewish Israelis out of poverty (National Insurance Institute, 2006). Only 19% of Arab citizens enter tertiary education (post 12th grade), compared to 43% of Jewish Israelis, and accordingly, more than 50% of the employed Arab labour force works in the manual labour sector (industry, manufacturing and agriculture), while only 24% of Jewish Israelis work in these low-wage jobs. Moreover, in 2003, 46 out of 47 towns with an above-average unemployment rate were Arab localities (Israel Employment Bureau, 2003). Thus, the vast majority of Arab citizens in Israel belong to what is traditionally considered the working class, though many workers and heads of households have been temporarily or permanently out of work.

Once an Arab citizen is out of work, the social safety net does not work in the same way as it would work for Jewish Israelis. In 2005, transfer payments from the National Insurance Institute succeeded to lift only 11% of poor Arab citizens out of poverty, while the welfare state did work for 47% of economically weak Jews. This extreme gap suggests that there are obstacles that deny Arab citizens access to social security and welfare. One example of these obstacles is the so-called "property clause" making welfare payments dependent on real estate property. In general, only Arab citizens own land; Jewish Israelis usually lease "state land". Moreover, the law assumes automatic inheritance, and frequently, applications for social welfare are turned down because the applicant's grandfather had land registered in his name. So, the family is not eligible for income benefits even though the land that the applicant allegedly owns was confiscated by Israel decades ago.

Arab job-seekers are systematically denied employment in skilled and high-wage positions, particularly in public service and government-owned companies. In the following governmental authorities, there are no or just a handful of Arab employees: Bank of Israel, Council for Higher Education, Second Authority for Television and Radio, Anti-Trust Authority, Anti-Drug Authority, Nature and National Parks Protection Authority, Postal Authority, Government Companies Authority, Antiquities Authority, Israel Broadcasting Authority, Airports Authority. According to data from 2002, only 0.8% of approximately 50,000 employees of government companies are Arabs (Sikkuy, 2006). The employment situation in the civil service is similar. For instance, in 2004, only 5.5% of Israels civil servants were Arabs, and 56% of whom worked in the Health Ministry alone. The Finance Ministry employed three Arabs, the Communications Ministry two, and one Arab worked in the Public Security Ministry. No Arab citizen worked in the Water Commission, the Electricity Authority, and the Firefighting and Rescue Commission (Sikkuy, 2006).

The State of Israel does not live up to its obligation to protect all its citizens and to apply temporary special measures to promote the status of disadvantaged population groups. On the contrary, Arab citizens are often excluded from affirmative action such as the so-called National Priority Area scheme to improve education and infrastructure in neglected communities. In 2005, the Supreme Court held that the National Priority Area scheme discriminates against Arab citizens and must thus be revised. This revision, however, has not yet taken place, and at any rate, the ruling only applies to discrimination in education and not in industrial infrastructure.

Moreover, no serious action is being taken to increase labour force participation of Arab women or to improve their employment conditions. Only 17% of Arab women participate in the civilian labour force, compared to 53% of Jewish women. In 2005, only 24,000 Arab women in Israel worked in full-time positions (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2006). Yet, Israels last Country Report to be examined by the UN CEDAW Committee[3] dedicated only one page out of a total of 186 to the extremely low labour force participation and disproportionately high unemployment and poverty rates among Arab women. It quoted social restrictions and the lack of workplaces and infrastructure in the Arab community as reasons, without any further explanation. One major cause of unemployment among Arab women is the outsourcing of textile production to Egypt and Jordan during the 1990s. Of the 10,700 textile workers in the Galilee in 1994, only 1,700 were left in 2001 (Gabbai, 2001). Nearly all of these workers were Arab women.

In September 2006, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour published a survey which revealed that 92% of employers checked in 580 workplaces in central and southern Israel are in violation of labour laws, and the Minister commented, "One of the ways of obtaining the goal of decreasing poverty and social inequality is enforcing labour laws" (Haaretz, 27/09/06).

Though the general trade union Histadrut is the official representative of all workers in Israel, it has only a small constituency among the Arab working class, and there is no alternative institution willing or able to press for enforcement of labour law, to educate working citizens about the principles of decent work and to provide a platform for organisation, empowerment and collective bargaining. Out of a total civilian labour force of 2.7 million in Israel, approximately 650,000 (=24%) are members of the general trade union Histadrut, and an estimated 55,000 of whom are Arab workers and their dependents.[4] Moreover, most workplaces in the low-wage sectors like construction, manufacturing and catering are unorganised and neglected by the Histadrut. Furthermore, the Histadrut does not represent migrant workers and the thousands of unemployed Israelis of all ethnic backgrounds. Thus, participants of the pilot welfare-to-work project Wisconsin Plan have nowhere to turn to and are left alone in their struggle for decent employment and life in dignity.

The lack of union membership and workers' rights awareness among Arab workers in Israel is the result of a number of interrelated factors, namely:

The Histadrut has a history of actively excluding Arab workers from employment during its Hebrew Labour campaign in pre-1948 Palestine, and ever since the Histadrut allowed Arabs to become full members of the union in 1959, it has continued to undermine labour struggles led by Arab workers (for instance, during the events leading to Land Day);[5]

The Histadrut is generally quite employer-friendly, having itself been the second-largest employer in Israel until 1995;

The most powerful Labour Councils within the Histadrut are linked to the government-owned companies like communication, electricity and water, port authorities, military, and only very few Arabs work in these "security-sensitive" industries;

Histadrut branches in the Arab communities are inactive and do not respond to challenges such as mass lay-offs in the textile industry or the welfare-to-work programme "Wisconsin Plan";

No Arab has ever held a significant executive position in the Histadrut.

In order to fight generational poverty caused by discrimination and exploitation, Arab workers and their families need an institution that provides legal support, empowerment and a platform for community activism and organisation. The recent war against Lebanon in July and August 2006 revealed once more that workers and the poor are hit first and worst by emergencies and crises, and Sawt el-Amel is committed to break this vicious circle by empowering Arab workers and thus the whole Arab community inside Israel to stand up for their rights as workers and as citizens.