BICOM

A general strike took effect across Israel this morning, although, after an all-night hearing, the National Labour Court limited the Histadrut’s general strike to only four hours. Labour Court President Nili Arad has ordered the Histadrut and the Federation of Israeli Economic Organisations to hold continuous negotiations to discuss the Histadrut’s demand to change the system for employing contract workers. Arad also said that the court must be given a report on the talks by Thursday. The Histadrut announced that it respects the ruling of the court and was ordering its workers to return to work at the end of the four hours.

The strike included trains, buses, universities, government ministries and municipalities. Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv was also closed. The Histadrut, the umbrella organisation for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, wants the government to hire some 250,000-contract workers, who have inferior working conditions than civil workers on the government payrolls. Today’s general strike comes after a summer of protests that have brought social and welfare issues to the fore of Israeli society.

Responding to the crisis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We must bring a solution that will not harm the Israeli economy at a time when there is a global shake-up in all the world’s economies. There is no need to disrupt the lives of Israelis. We must not risk what we have achieved with much work.”

The strike is estimated to cause a loss of 330 million shekels per day to the economy.