Arabs Against Discrimination[Official human trafficking ]

Official human trafficking

“The danger of a new system for employing foreign workers is in that it might actually increase the conditions for slavery in Israel ”

Source: www.haaretz.co.il , January 26, 2005

By: Ella Keren

In August 2004, a ministerial committee—composed of the Ministries of Industry, Commerce, and Labor, Justice, and Finance—prepared a report suggesting changes in the system for employing foreign workers in Israel . The recommendations of the report have been accepted and will enter the period of enforcement very soon. The planners of the report observed some of the problems of the current system, the most pressing of which is controlling and organizing workers, and properly enforcing the law on employers. This system—according to them—encouraged employers to take illegal actions, and isolated a weak and cheap labor force, distancing Israelis from the labor market, and leading to a decline in the working conditions of most cheap foreign laborers. The committee tried to enforce an alternative order aimed at increasing the cost of employing foreign workers thereby guaranteeing appropriate working conditions for them. The goals of this system are noble, but instead of solving the problem at its root by giving permits to workers in a certain field and for a delimited time, and seriously enforcing labor laws on employers, the committee decided to follow a system that only differed from the previous system in appearance, while also aggravating the problems they wanted to solve.

The following are the most significant issues of the newly-suggested system: the state will continue allocating a limited number of workers and granting permits/visas to the unions of human labor firms in order to allow for the employment of between 500-2,000 workers in every union. In return, for every worker the state will receive around NIS 26,000 annually from these unions. This amount will equal the difference between employing an Israeli worker and a foreign one. Employers and businesses will receive the amount of workers they need from these unions, and the unions will also be responsible for taking care of workers' salaries and rights, and allowing them to move between unions. There will be government surveillance over the finances of these unions, and a representative will be provided to address workers' complaints.

There is not enough room here to address the pitfalls of this system. Instead of there being government mediation between workers and employers, this mediation has been left in the hands of the unions, whose main aim and purpose is to make a profit. This system reflects the allegiance between capitalism and power. The state and the unions are the ones who profit the most from this system, making it to the benefit of the state and the unions to maintain a labor market that is dependent on exploited foreign workers. If the state is going to benefit from the gap which results from exploiting these foreign workers, and not from narrowing this gap, then how will it benefit by enforcing fair labor laws? Therefore it is no laughing matter that this system is satisfied with diffidently supervising unions, and allowing them to cover themselves with a so-called fig leaf, by way of the representative for workers' complaints. The monopoly, which will be given to the unions by this new system will lead to price wars between the various labor companies, and will make the possibility of transferring laborers between unions of no value. This system grants unions legal power that allows them to rent foreign laborers to whoever wants them, as if they are merely pieces of equipment.

In addition, this exempts them from paying them during periods when they are not employed.

The current system has shown us the negative aspects of exploiting foreigners for labor in a legal manner: laborers will continue to find illegal venues for work in order to improve their circumstances and their salaries, and employers will continue to prefer foreign labor to Israeli labor.

What is even more dangerous is that this suggested system brings us closer to the real danger which lies at the heart of the situation, and that is the spread of slave-like labor conditions, which coincide with the international definition of human trafficking. But this time these conditions will be enforced with legal permission from the state of Israel .