Employees at mobile carrier Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL) are unionizing, a few months after the well-publicized struggle by Pelephone Communications Ltd. employees. One of the results of that struggle was the precedent-setting decision by the National Labor Court banning employers from objecting to unionizing by their employees.
Sources inform ''Globes'' that hundreds of Cellcom employees have joined the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel), and the secret activity has now become open. Histadrut officials today arrived at the carrier's headquarters to openly sign up employees, and sent SMSs and e-mails to employees offering them to join the union online.
A Histadrut source said that the very serious move included the establishment of a provisional workers committee. The union's effort is complicated: in addition to recruiting a third of Cellcom's employees, it must also unionize employees at 013 NetVision Ltd., which is an integral part of the company. The union must recruit one third of 7,500 employees. "This is really complex, but we love to break records," the source told "Globes".
Cellcom's merger with NetVision was closed today, with a VP and 50 employees losing their jobs. The merger has made the Histadrut's work harder, but was also the trigger for the unionization at the carrier, a subsidiary of IDB Holding Corp. Ltd. (TASE:IDBH), controlled by Nochi Dankner.
Pelephone, a subsidiary of Bezeq Israeli Telecommunication Co. Ltd. (TASE: BEZQ), controlled by Shaul Elovitch, bitterly fought the unionization. Pelephone's management did not conceal its opposition and took active steps to block it - steps which ultimately resulted in the National Labor Court's ruling.
A source at Cellcom unequivocally told "Globes", "We won't be Pelephone, or even anything like it. The workers know how much they've been given until now, and we'll respect their decision."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 2, 2013
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