Minister of Finance Benjamin Netanyahu last night canceled a meeting with Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel) chairman MK Amir Perez (One Nation), scheduled for tonight. He made the announcement after the National Union of Government Employees decided to escalate its sanctions from this morning by discontinuing all operations by its exceptions committees. The committees, staffed by workers committees members, are designed to help people in distress and urgently in need a specific service to obtain it, despite the sanctions.
The Government Employees Union’s escalation followed a meeting between Ofer Eini, its secretary general, and Civil Service commissioner Shmuel Hollander. Eini explained that the state had withdrawn its consent to agreements the parties had reached in recent weeks.
Hollander denied these claims, saying they were unfounded, and asserted that the negotiations had achieved considerable progress.
Hollander responded to the escalation of sanctions by saying, “The Government Employees Union has decided to continue abusing the nation’s citizens, without any real reason. The workers committees are misleading the public. Every time the parties near an agreement on the basis of understandings between Perez and Netanyahu, the Histadrut finds a different reason for repudiating those understandings.”
The Histadrut said in response that the sanctions had been escalated because the Ministry of Finance had repudiated previous understandings, and because Netanyahu was deliberately adopting delaying tactics, and had avoided meeting Perez for three days.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on December 31, 2003