The reform of Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) is stuck. A year after the Yogev Committee under Government Companies Authority director general Ori Yogev was set up, the committee members met Minister of Finance Yair Lapid and Minister of Energy and Water Resources Silvan Shalom on Thursday and told them that the attempt to reach agreement with the IEC workers on reform had failed. The head of the IEC workers committee is Miki Tzarfati.
One possibility open to the state is to continue carrying out the reform unilaterally, compensating the workers in order to secure their agreement. The chances of such a move succeeding are not high, and it would arouse opposition from the workers committee.
The alternative is to continue the slow reform whereby the state allows more and more private power producers to enter the market and challenge IEC.
Two months ago, there was another breakdown in the negotiations between the state and the IEC workers committee, with the workers claiming that the state had toughened its stance. Yogev opened the meeting (which broke up shortly afterwards) with a sharp rebuke for the workers committee for having threatened to open contempt of court proceedings against the Electricity Authority chairwoman. Later in the meeting, Ministry of Finance Director of Wages Kobi Amsalem said that as far as he was concerned there would be no halt to the investigation he was carrying out into salary excesses even if a new collective agreement was signed as part of the reform.
Yogev confirmed the report in "Globes" that Lapid objected to giving the IEC workers a NIS 2,500 pension supplement, and demanded that the financial benefit offered to the workers in place of free electricity should be reduced. Yogev said that the gap between the sides on structural changes was fairly small. At that, the meeting ended.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 7, 2014
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2013