The Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel) and the workers' committee at the Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) plant in Kfar Saba today declared a work dispute, following what they called a deadlock in talks with management about plans to introduce a new shifts model that will affect the employees' work conditions, without this being arranged in a collective work agreement. Employees will now be legally entitled to go on strike in two weeks.
The Kfar Saba plant includes production, research laboratories, and offices. According to a detailed report by Teva, 1,300 workers were employed there at the end of 2015. The Histadrut today said that Teva management was "taking work and operations away from workers at the plant and giving it to service contractors, and has employed personnel contractors in the plant's core business, thereby harming organized labor." The Histadrut added that the workers' representatives were being excluded from processes involving the workers, including moving workers to new positions and changes in job definitions.
Eliran Kozlik, chairman of the workers' committee at the Teva plant in Kfar Saba, said, "After management instituted a unilateral measure, the Histadrut declared a work dispute at our request. I hope we solve the issues through dialogue, as we have done up until now. I call on company management to retract the unilateral measures and to begin immediate negotiations with us to solve the dispute in order to avoid measures that will damage the company, its workers, and our common future."
Teva said in response, "Teva was surprised to receive a notice of a work dispute on matters that have been the subject of transparent dialogue for many months. The real reason for the declaration of a dispute concerns implementation of a management decision to change the model for shifts, a measure designed to substantially boost productivity on the site and to return to a track that will ensure business continuity and employment security for the workers, without affecting their pay, as has already taken place consensually and with understanding at other Teva sites. We will continue the dialogue with the workers' representatives until the dispute is solved for the benefit of the company and its workers."
Managed by CEO Erez Vigodman, Teva has a $48.6 billion market cap. The company has nearly 7,000 employees at a number of sites in Israel, including Kfar Saba, Petah Tikva, Jerusalem, and Ramat Hovav. Teva has begun the construction of a new headquarters in the Ra'anana industrial zone, where it will house 3,000 headquarters, R&D, and laboratory personnel in a special compound.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 3, 2016
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