The Histadrut does care - for the monopoly unions

Peretz is right; we must urgently find employment for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed Israelis. What he neglects to disclose, however, is that a distorted Labor market, fashioned in great part by so-called progressive Labor and welfare laws promoted for decades by the Histadrut, has resulted in the odd phenomenon of it paying to go on welfare rather than work.

As a result, 300,000 Israelis are ostensibly seeking work, while a similar number of foreign workers, many illegal, find employment in Israel. Peretz also ignores the fact that the above market-rate salaries extorted by the powerful unions of Israeli monopolies, such as the electricity and water monopoly unions, come at the expense of the unemployed and the lower-paid workers.

The Histadrut has long since stopped caring for the “weak”, in whose name it ostensibly carries on a destructive campaign against vital economic reforms because it is captive to the destructive demands of the monopoly unions.

Peretz is right when he bemoans the fate of hundreds of thousand of Israeli families who cannot make ends meet even when they are gainfully employed. But he knows that his Histadrut does not lift a finger to help these families by fighting against the many monopolies and cartels that exact 30-50% “rents” on all consumer needs and products. This is because the workers of these monopolies are the backbone of the so-called New Histadrut.

As a result, low-income families especially have to spend a third to a half of their woeful salaries on the inflated prices of everything they consumeג€”housing, health, education, water and creditג€”with the Histadrut’s blessing. They are robbed of half their income, but the Histadrut, “protector of the weak”, in return offers them crumbs like raising the minimum wage by 5%.

Peretz is right that our so-called development towns are stagnating and need help. But he is well aware that our banking duopoly starves small businessesג€”especially in the periphery, far from the protekzia circle of north Tel Avivג€”so that these true engines of economic growth, the entities that provide the most employment, cannot survive, let alone grow (90,000 of them have closed in recent years). The Histadrut, and its big-mouth spokesman, keep mum about this great social injustice because the organization, in hock to the banks to the tune of NIS 4.4 billionג€”squandered on who knows whatג€”is reluctant to take on the banks.

Again, Peretz is right. Workers should preferably not be fired during a bad recession, when they can find no alternative work, and we should do something about the scandalous salary gaps between most workers and the privileged few, especially in the public sector.

But he must know that it is the regressive anti-growth policies of the Histadrut that greatly contributed to making this recession much worse and much harder to overcome, and that it is the Histadrut that protects the high salaries extorted by public monopoly unions.

The Histadrut preaches against the income gap but pays very high wages to some of its own privileged operatives, while firing many of its lower-paid workers.

Peretz certainly scores a point when he calls for saving the pension funds from bankruptcy. But he must know that the only way to save the pension funds is to get them out of the clutches of his Histadrut.

It is the Histadrut that has driven the funds to the brink of bankruptcy by instituting very costly arrangements for privileged groups, by criminally neglectful management, and by squandering the pension funds’ assets (the construction workers’ fund, once rich in assets, somehow managed to accumulate an amazing NIS 4.5 billion deficit) on various Histadrut enterprises like its sports clubs. These enterprises provided excellent and costly employment perks and junkets to Histadrut political operatives and their cronies.

Peretz has now pulled all the stops, including a threatened general strike that will cost the economy hundreds of millions of shekels a dayג€”all in an effort to undermine a vital economic rescue plan, and this during a war, in time of deep recession, when Israel is facing an economic catastrophe.

The work slowdowns Peretz ordered in ports and the customs authority are killing Israeli exports when they are most vulnerable. They are denying many factories their regular supply of raw materials, causing further closings and widespread unemployment. All this is to protect the privileges of exceedingly well-paid workers in the public-sector monopolies.

Peretz and his honchos are quite ready to deny many workers their bread so long as they can protect the thick layers of butter on their own bread. They have no hesitation in pulling down the whole house to protect their power base.

The Histadrut is offering snake oil as a prescription for curing the maladies of our economy: an enforced loan to be levied on everyone so that more money can become available for public-sector squandering. This despite the fact that the government budget is already reeling under the burden of redeeming, recirculating and servicing older loans, and that such a loan is really a hidden tax further destroying the incentive to work.

The public is becoming increasingly aware that they cannot trust the solutions offered by an organization that has squandered hundreds of millions of taxpayer money, that it cannot trust anything to those who drove the health funds into permanent deficits and crisis, and ruined the workers’ pensions funds.

The public is also aware of the regressive, unholy alliance formed by public-sector monopoly unions, the teachers’ unions and the municipal workers’ unions. These groups vehemently oppose the government’s recovery plan because it may touch their extorted privileges.

The public knows that despite one of the highest per-capita expenditures on education, the Israeli educational system is producing worse and worse results, largely because the regressive and nepotist workers’ unions are degrading the system by choking it with bureaucracy, protecting failed teachers and denying teachers any incentive to excel.

The public also knows that most municipalities are pits of waste, nepotism and corruption, and that the taxpayer’s hard-earned money gets squandered on featherbedding and inflated bureaucracies.

Peretz and his coalition of regressive unionists are causing the ruin of many enterprises. They are spreading wide unemployment, and may even precipitate a disastrous financial collapse.

It is cold comfort that they will eventually pay for their dastardly betrayal of Israel’s workers when time again reveals how ruinous their actions are, and how threatening to the very survival of the Jewish state.