Israel: Migrant Workers Lack Basic Rights
by TRNN
In Israel two weeks ago, there was a protest, Jewish-Israeli
citizens calling for the deportation or ouster of African and Filipino
migrant workers living in their neighborhood. The issue of migrant labor
is a hot one in Israel. And joining us now to talk about the perhaps
200,000 migrant workers in Israel is Shir Hever. Shir is a researcher
for the joint Palestinian-Israeli organization the Alternative
Information Center. He's the author of The Political Economy of Israel's Occupation. He's now working on his PhD in Germany.
Shir
Hever is an economic researcher in the Alternative Information Center, a
Palestinian-Israeli organization active in Jerusalem and Beit-Sahour.
Researching the economic aspect of the Israeli occupation of the
Palestinian territories, some of his research topics include the
international aid to the Palestinians and to Israel, the effects of the
Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories on the Israeli
economy, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against
Israel. His work also includes giving lectures and presentations on the
economy of the occupation. His first book: Political Economy of
Israel's Occupation: Repression Beyond Exploitation, has been
published by Pluto Press.
PAUL JAY, SENIOR
EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in
Washington. In Israel two weeks ago, there was a protest, Jewish-Israeli
citizens calling for the deportation or ouster of African and Filipino
migrant workers living in their neighborhood. The issue of migrant labor
is a hot one in Israel. And joining us now to talk about the perhaps
200,000 migrant workers in Israel is Shir Hever. Shir is a researcher
for the joint Palestinian-Israeli organization the Alternative
Information Center. He's the author of The Political Economy of Israel's Occupation. He's now working on his PhD in Germany. Thanks for joining us, Shir.
SHIR HEVER: Hello.
JAY: Let's start with some basic facts about migrant workers in Israel. Go ahead.
HEVER:
Well, I think the most important thing is to understand the historical
process that led Israel to become one of the highest per capita
importers of migrant workers in the world. Israel is not as wealthy on
per capita terms compared to countries like Germany, the Netherlands, or
the United States, but it has a very high proportion of labor
immigrants because of the occupation, the Israeli occupation of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip. Over the first 30-years of occupation or so, the
cheap labor of Palestinian workers coming from the West Bank and Gaza to
work for Israeli employers completely transformed the Israeli
construction sector and agricultural sector. These two sectors came to
rely on this cheap Palestinian labor, the fact that they could just pick
up Palestinian workers in the morning, pay them for one day of labor,
wages that were far below the Israeli minimum wage, and get as many
workers as they wanted, basically, to do the job quickly. These workers
would later then have to return to their homes at the end of the work
day in the West Bank or in Gaza, even if it meant for these workers that
they had to spend four hours a day just traveling to the workplace and
back.
JAY: Going through checkpoints each time, I assume.
HEVER:
Yeah, yeah, waiting at the checkpoint, because usually what would
happen is that they would form a very long queue at the checkpoint that
could take three hours or more, just to wait in that queue. And if they
didn't want to be late for work, they had to start waiting at the
checkpoint at 4 a.m. in the morning, even earlier.
JAY: How much would a daily average wage be for a Palestinian worker like that?HEVER:
Well, over the years, we're talking about decades of Palestinians
working for Israeli employers. So, over the years, the wages of course
changed. On average, the more recent wages would be comparable to
between $400 and $500 a month for these workers. But the wages were
about one half of the minimum wage in Israel. But they are far above the
average wages in the West Bank and Gaza. So for these Palestinians who
were able to get this job, it was a very important source of income, and
it actually increased, in the first years of occupation, the overall
income of the Palestinian population under Israel's control.
JAY:
This started to change to immigrant, migrant workers in the
Philippines, from Africa. So why the change? And how much has it
changed?
HEVER: Well, the change came in the '90s. And in
the early '90s, the Israeli government decided to adopt a new policy
known as the policy of separation, which is that Israel will no longer
strive to extend its control into the occupied territories as much as
possible, but would entrench its control over the areas that have
already become Judified, or already populated by Jews, by trying to
segregate the Palestinian population and separate from it. And from
1991, during the first Gulf War, Israel implemented the first blanket
closure on the Palestinian territories, and that meant that Palestinians
were just not able to enter Israel. No permit was sufficient for them
to enter Israel in order to find employment. All of a sudden they were
completely stranded. And what happened, especially later into the '90s,
during the Oslo years, especially in '94 to '96, when Israel used
closures more and more frequently for extended periods of time, that the
Israeli construction sector and the Israeli agricultural sector that
have become so dependent on this cheap source of labor came into a
crisis. Now, these sectors have neglected investments in capital and
investments in machinery, because it was much cheaper just to use
Palestinian workers. So, for example, the whole prefabrication industry
in Israel was abandoned. And while prefabrication of buildings is still
widely used in modern countries, in Israel it is just not used, because
prefabrication requires more investment in machinery and less investment
in labor. Labor is cheaper, so they just didn't use it.
JAY:
So this is kind of not people's picture of Israel. It's always thought
of as such a high-tech economy, not a labor-intensive economy.
HEVER:
That's because this is the image that Israel is trying to project by
putting the focus more on Israel's high-tech sector. But the high-tech
sector in Israel is not the majority of the economy, and most Israeli
employees are not employed in the high-tech sector. The other sectors in
Israel, the industry sector, the agricultural sector, the service
sector, the construction sector, these sectors are actually much less
developed than the average in the developed world, in, for example, the
OECD countries.
JAY: So the transition takes place away
from cheap Palestinian labor to imported migrant workers from Africa,
from Philippines, other countries. How many are there, and what are the
conditions of life for them?
HEVER: This transition came
very quickly, because the lobby of the construction companies and the
agricultural companies came to the government in the '90s and said, we
need these cheap workers and we need a solution immediately. So the
government gave them permits to import labor immigrants to replace the
Palestinian workers that were no longer able to come to work. And this
was thought of as a very temporary kind of ad hoc solution. But it
immediately created a very complex system. And the system was that
employers in Israel got a permit for a certain number of workers. They
didn't get permits for specific names but for bringing in a certain
number, let's say 100 workers. And they would bring in workers with the
aid of various person power companies that would recruit these workers
from the Far East or from Africa--mainly non-Muslim and non-Arab
countries, because those migrants were not welcome in Israel. Now, when
these workers came and started to work for their employers, they would
have to pay out of their own salary the cost of the plane ticket to come
to Israel, and a commission, a very high commission they had to pay to
the company that brought them to Israel. So they had to pay a lot of
money and to work for many months before they started to see any kind of
profit that they could send back to their families at home, which was
the original reason for them coming to work in Israel. And when they
started making that profit, by then they would also start to learn a
thing or two about their rights, about Israeli law. Maybe they would
hear that there are unions out there that might help them, various human
rights organizations and worker rights organizations [incompr.] certain
things their employers are not allowed to do [incompr.] them. As soon
as they learn about this, the employers would just fire them, would just
fire them immediately and bring new ones, because like I said, the
employer have a list--have just a number of permits, and they can easily
replace the people working under these permits.
JAY: So
what happens if people there are fired? I mean, I understand of the
250,000 or so migrant workers, I think you've mentioned only about
60,000 are actually legal. So people get fired, and they get into kind
of an illegal limbo and face possible deportation.
HEVER:
Exactly. I mean, these people find themselves in Israel in a situation
where they haven't actually made any money yet, or very little; now
they're expected to just leave and go back to their countries without
actually doing what they came in to do, which is to work and earn some
money. And some of them are still paying their debts to these companies
that brought them over, still paying their commission.
JAY:
Now, what happens when they have families, the people get--women get
pregnant and they have kids, and there's a growing population, and then
you see protests like the one we reported on a few weeks ago, where
they're calling for the expulsion of Africans and Filipinos? Start with
what are the rights of women and of children born in Israel.
HEVER:
The numbers indeed started to grow very fast. The labor migrants don't
have very clear rights. They do have some minimum rights as workers,
only if they're employed. But there is a system in which the employers
were allowed to take the passport from the workers and basically keep
the passport to ensure that the worker remains loyal to them and doesn't
try to run away. And that's pretty much akin to slavery. There was an
appeal to the Israeli high court, and this policy was changed, but then
the Israeli Parliament actually passed a law to make it legal again for
employers to hold on to the passports of these labor immigrants, to make
it impossible for them to escape. Of course, it doesn't make it
impossible for them to become illegals, to escape and become illegals,
but if they are caught, they're going to spend a long time in prison and
they're going to be deported.
JAY: And what happens to migrant workers' children?
HEVER:
Well, the children do not become citizens of Israel, and they don't
really have any rights. What happens is that these children don't have
access to medical insurance and to basic education. And an interesting
development happened when the Tel Aviv municipality decided that they
just cannot have slums of these children who have absolutely no services
applied to them. They started to provide certain services to these
children, very basic health care, very basic education, you know, just
to try to prevent Tel Aviv from becoming a Third World city. But, of
course, the municipality has not the resources nor the willingness to
really address the problem. And compared to other OECD countries, Israel
has the worst level of health benefits to the labor immigrants, and
also extremely bad record on education services [incompr.]
JAY:
Now, my understanding is there's some discussion or there already is a
measure to deport migrant women workers who get pregnant.
HEVER:
Yes. If a migrant worker woman gets pregnant and this information
reaches the Israeli authorities, they are authorized to deport her
immediately or within a very short time. This decision has also been
challenged, and there is a struggle about it by human rights groups,
which are trying to, of course, make such practices illegal and to
protect the rights of the mother and the child. There is a very strong
scandal and debate within Israel because of the various methods that the
government is using to control the immigrant population. For example, a
special unit was set of inspectors that roam the streets, especially in
areas like south Tel Aviv, where a lot of migrant workers live. And
these inspectors approach anyone who has dark skin or perhaps a foreign
accent and they ask for papers. And if that person cannot provide the
right papers, they will be arrested on the spot. This practice was so
deplorable in the eyes of many human rights activists that they have
formed kind of volunteer groups of people on bicycle who would follow
these inspectors around and try to warn the migrants to take shelter and
to escape them, so that they will not be arrested.JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, Shir.HEVER: Thank you very much, Paul.
