Some of the big chains and businesses around the country have decided to strike over the judicial reform situation.

Shimon Goldberg, a senior Haredi politician in Bet Shemesh and someone who considers himself a future mayoral candidate, tweeted:
Fox, Azrieli, and Big have businesses in Bet Shemesh. it would be interesting to see how they respond if the Local Planning Committee  will strike against them when they submit their requests..

So the Finance Ministry and the Teachers Union came to an agreement. School will start on time, the agreement is for 5 years or so so as long as the two sides keep their end of the deal there should not be any strikes in the coming years, and kids will be able to go to school.

Tomorrow at 11am, Bank Hapoalim branches around the country are going to close for a bit. They will be going on strike to protest the verbal violence their employees undergo from their customers.

The striking of the Foreign Ministry workers should be stopped. I don't know what their problem is, except for wanting more money which is always the case, but when it harms national interests striking should not be allowed. There should be some form of pressure they are allowed to hold, but not a strike. Stopping aliyah to the country?

They just announced that they will be halting all consular services abroad.

In many far-flung countries, it was well known that the local Chabad house provided a lot of the services for the local Consulate. From what I can gather it was generally an unofficial arrangement. The Chabad house is generally able to mobilize much quicker and provide on the ground help much faster than the Consulate, which can often be handcuffed by politics and relations, interests and bureaucracy.

That being said, it is a bit funny when the Foreign Ministry dumps its responsibility completely on to the Chabad houses. It says a lot for the Chabad houses and the shluchim, for their dedication and for the quality of assistance, but it is still strange the Foreign Ministry would strike and dump their responsibility on Chabad shoulders.

In the Israel Hayom article about the Foreign Ministry workers stepping up the level of the strike, Army Radio is quoted as saying from the Foreign Ministry " Israeli tourists who find themselves stranded abroad are advised to turn to a local Chabad house for assistance, Army Radio said."

strange.

and on that note, a Chabad shliach that was spoken to had the following to say in response:

"We would be happy to assist any Israeli or Jew in need. I don't expect we'll be bombarded by phone calls, but we will do everything we can to help," Rabbi Mordechai Levenhartz, who heads the Chabad house in Kiev, Ukraine, told Army Radio. "We are unable to issue visas, I'm afraid, but we can offer a comfortable place to stay and a hot meal."

Way to go Chabad. Down with the Foreign Ministry.

I am a free-market kind of guy, and I firmly believe that the "Open Skies" deal, which effectively breaks the near monopoly of the Israeli airline companies on the airspace will end up being good for the consumer, in the way of forcing the airlines to provide better service, and forcing them to sell tickets at more competitive prices.

I feel bad that potentially employees will need to be laid off in the process, but I do not think that making the consumer pay more money to protect the interests of El Al is the way to go. They will need to be creative in finding ways to be profitable.

Even now, they should really be more creative in finding ways to protest the decision. Striking now only reinforces in the public mind the necessity of the move. For far too long El Al has held the Israeli consumer by the short hairs, and striking now at this juncture just emphasizes that and reminds everyone of that. Few people are going to have mercy on El Al with this stark reminder that whenever they get upset about one thing or another they can shut down the country and inconvenience tens of thousands of people in an instant.

I also hope that people who are affected by the strike, loss of business due to inability to travel, loss of money spent on vacations, people who are in distressful situations - travelling for medical care or bereavement issues, will all sue El Al in some sort of class-action suit or something to punish them for this behavior...

She should have gone into surgery yesterday evening, but they keep bringing in other people with more urgent problems. In the meantime they are giving the child pain-killers.
That is how it works, just like by the Carmel fire disaster. Only in the end did they bring in the supertanker. Also with the doctors strike - until they were choked the strike did not come to an end. It is just a shame that when Bibi broke his foot he received care for it very quickly.

  -- Lee Spektor, a mother of a child in a hospital waiting for surgery abotu hwo the nurse's strike, now on its 15th day, will only end when the government will be pushed into a corner

Quote Of The Day

The opinion of the nurses is important to me, but we do not owe them anything. We have an agreement already that will expire in a year. When it will be finished - they can open it anew.

  -- Deputy Health minister Yaakov Litzman about the nurse's strike

A large percentage of the people who do the work in the public sector are not employees of the State, or of the institution in which they do the work, but are outsourced by manpower companies. These laborers often have very poor working conditions, and few if any benefits.

The point of today's massive national strike by the labor union is to protect the rights of the contract laborers. to demand benefits and appropriate working conditions for these people.

As mentioned, the Knesset just voted unanimously to approve a raise for all MKs. I have a great suggestion that might solve the debate and stop the strike.

Get rid of all the MKs, and from now on we outsource that job to contractors.

On the one hand they will be acutely aware of the plight of the contract laborers, and will perhaps be better able to deal with these issues, while at the same time we will save a lot of money as we won't need to pay them so much any longer because they will all be non-employees of the state. Lower salaries, along with lower benefits. I see it as a win-win solution.

In case you have not heard yet, as of last night the employees of Israel Rail Authority have declared a strike, based on the decision of the Vaad Ovdei Rakevet. They are striking due to planned reforms in the rail system.

Israel Rail has turned to the Labor Union to resolve the dispute so they can get the trains back up and running, but for now they are on strike and not running.

if you use the trains to get to work or to go places, you had better find an alternative for the near future.

You can get updates from the main page of the Israel Rail website.

[The doctor I saw at 9 AM is still here at 9 PM], he has been here over 12 hours... If they are striking, they must know something. These are people who learned, invested a lot of money, yet there are people who sell falafel who earn more then them..

There is a local public school run in the Chabad style, designed for Chabad families, that opened the school year with a strike. The parents are upset that the Ministry of Education appointed a principal that is not Chabad. They demand a Chabad principal and will not allow the school to open until they get one. the Ministry of Education has certain rules how it appoints principals and administrators, via tender and qualifications, and this guy won.

At first, this story didn't interest me. Their own school should be run the way the student body wants it - if it is Chabad, the principal should be Chabad. But I didn't really care - what does it have to do with me? they are fighting for a little more control of their own piece of the pie, and it is more or less not connected to anybody else.

And in humor I told people that it is not so bad that Chabad kids stay a home a few extra days while they work this out. All it means is a few days less of inculcating in these kids that the rebbe is mashiach. So no big deal that they are on strike.

Nothing really changed, and they are still on strike, and the story is still not that interesting, but now I started wondering about how this works.

This is a public school. Why do they get to run a public school as if it is private? They get the benefits of public school (free and whatever else), and still control it as if it were private.

That does not make sense. Why can't the school I send my kids to become a public school and still be run by the combination of the adminstrative staff and the parent body? Then we can have our private school with the benefits of being officially listed as public school.

if the Chabad people want to run the school and make their own decisions, and not be restricted to the rules and methods of the Ministry of Education, let them open a private schoollike everyone else.

Perhaps the MoE should have as part of its criteria in choosing administrators the consideration of worldview of the families that attend the school and look for someone within the same sector of society. It makes sense to me. But in the meantime, with the school being public and under the authority of the MoE, I see no reason why they should have the right to run it like a private school.

You want private education, open a private school like everyone else in the world does.

In Israel, strike are so common that...on the Ministry of Commerce website they have a link to search for which office is on strike...

Great news to wake up to!

At midnight, the employees of "Rakevet Israel" - the trains authority - have decided to begin a strike against the system. They have shut down all lines all around the country. The trains authority says the strike is illegal (i.e. they did not get permission to strike from the labor courts), and are working to cancel it. It is over some squabble about how they get treated at work.

Great way to wake up - to news that your way to work does not exist. I hope they fire everybody as a way of solving this.

If you need to follow the strike to know when it canceled and the trains start running, you can either turn on your radio, or call the Rail hotline *5770 and hear updated messages about the status.

1. A group of Arab MKs have announced that they are drafting a document declaring their rejection of Israel as a Jewish state.

I am not really sure how a rejection like that works. The took some sort of oath when they joined the Israeli government. Do they have the ability to reject it while at the same time serving in its government?By definition, they must accept Israel and the Jewish state simply by their participation in its governance.

Let us not forget - the Declaration of Independance upon which the State of Israel was founded says, "ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE'S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL."

"Israel" and "Jewish State" go hand in hand from the inception of the State. If you serve in the governance, and take an oath to uphold its laws and be faithful to the State, by definition you accept it. How can you then reject it? If they had any integrity and really rejected the State, should they not resign their seats? And if not, should they not be thrown out of the Knesset, for serving in bad faith or something?

2. The fight between the Justice Minister and the Supreme Court is continuing and even heating up. JM Friedmann wants to impose new reforms on the court. The court feels threatened and rejects the unilateral reforms. It has turned into a real fight.

While I have no opinion on the specific reforms, as I do not understand them or what the ramifications of these reforms are, I always enjoy a good fight. The Supreme Court had it coming. They are an elite group and the selection of justices for the bench are conducted not by any publicly elected body or committee, rather by the justices themselves. They have been accused of being separate from the people and overstepping their boundaries considering everything to be within its purview and authority. Friedmann has been looking for ways to limit the courts power.

I particularly enjoyed this quote from Aharon Barak, the retired former President of the Supreme Court in which he says, "The way to do this is by instigating public debate, and promoting the reforms in the spirit of our legal culture. It is possible that the High Court has gone too far in extending its jurisdiction, although I beg to differ. But this needs to be debated rather than imposed from above by the legislature. This is wrong."

I like that - he says there must be public debate on the issue. Maybe the court has taken too much power, but that power should not just be taken away. There should be a public debate. Hmmmmm, when the court took the power, did they hold public debates? Did the courts ever embrace public debate on the issues relating to the court? Not that I remember. Public debate was always rejected as being incitement and anti-democratic. Now that their heads are seriously on the chopping block, public debate seems to be a good fallback...

3. The middle and high school teachers strike trudges on. It has been running for over a month and there is no end in sight. Friday looked good when Olmert publicly discussed the issue for the first time saying he supports serious wage increases for the teachers. That optimism that statement brought was quickly dashed when the representative of the teachers union went to meet with Olmert to discuss Olmert's proposal and Olmert refused to meet with him.

Last night the teachers and their supporters held a large rally in Tel Aviv with "tens of thousands" in attendance showing their support. Knowing these teachers, they probably took roll call...

4. This past week yet another criminal investigation was opened up into Ehud Olmert. This one for illegal campaign funding... Somehow he still manages to hold on to his seat... This is more of a critique on those who sit in his government for them letting the most corrupt politician Israel ever had as PM to continue negotiate away unhindered.

5. Meir Sheetrit, the Interior Minister and a leading member of the Kadima party, has announced that the municipality of Sderot is in his sights..

Sheetrit has ordered an investigation into the affairs of the municipality, claiming it is run with corruption. The mayor of Sderot, Eli Moyal, has been under investigation and relieved himself of his duties for four months to allow the investigation to run its course. This past week he came back to work due to no progress in the investigation. Now this new investigation was announced with no specific details. It is probably just because Moyal has been so outspoken against the government and the lack of protection provided to the city of Sderot and its residents.

Supposedly in a recent visit to Sderot, Sheetrit met with local activists of the Kadima party and at the time promised them that he intended to disband the municipal government and appoint a new one. Clearly he intends to put "yes men" in power who will not criticize the government so much. We will see how this one plays out...

And if Sheetrit is really so worried about corruption and bad governance, he should be figuring out how to replace the leaders of Kadima who have all been indicted, under , multiple investigations, convicted and yet are still allowed to run the show. Work on disbanding them before you go attack the already beleaguered city of Sderot.

5.

The Labor Union called for a general strike today. That pretty much means the country services have been shut down. The reason is because the problem from a few months ago regarding unpaid municipal workers has still not been resolved, despite government promises many times to resolve it.

They rescheduled the strike a few times already and after the government not coming through on their promises another time, the Histadrut finally decided not to give them any more chances but to show they are serious. So we have a major strike shutting down the country right now. Hopefully it will be resolved quickly and things can get back to the normal level of inefficiency!

The strike was originally called to begin at 6am this morning. They compromised to push it off until 9am to allow a few extra hours for last minute negotiations. Until 9am nothing was shut down and no services were delayed. Everything (evertything that opens before 9am that is) worked normally until 9am. At 9am whatever was working in the public sector then shut down.

Everything, that is, except for one thing. The trains. Of all the striking authorities, everyone provided their services to the public until 9am except for the trains. People who went for earlier trains found the doors to the stations locked and signs saying they are on strike.

The Labor Union has announced that even if the strike continues, they will allow flights from England to land. The reason is the upcoming soccer (football for you non-Americans) match between Israel and England. They are expecting a lot of English fans to fly in and have decided that they should open the airport to these English hooligans.

At the same time, they are still undecided as to whether they will allow flights for 900 students returning from Poland (March of the Living) to land. That is aside from all the people travelling for personal reasons and business reasons who are stranded. The English soccer fans are more important. Soccer is a national emergency.

It is all a matter of priorities.

The strike is over. The Labor Courts last night declared the strike must be ended immediately and that the workers must return to work.

I do not know which side is right in this case. I feel horrible about the poor employees who have not had their salaries paid in months, but it is not so clear the government is at fault for that.

Regardless of who is at fault, I think the strike was wrong. Maybe they should have held a more limited strike and it would have been more appropriate. Maybe shut down a few of the government offices that were involved in the problem.

It was wrong to shut down the airport and cause aggravation to travellers. People have lost lots of money because of the strike, along with lots of time and anxiety. They have had business trips delayed causing losses, vacations must be rescheduled effecting cancellation and rescheduling fees, etc. The one port of entry to Israel should be excluded from any strike. It should be made illegal for airport employees to strike.

The trains should not have been on strike. People just want to get to work and home. It took me 2 hours to get home from work last night. I had to take a bus to the bus station to get another bus that takes a circuitous route to my home. I had to pay extra (I already have a monthly ticket on the train) because of the strike. I had to find rides at times. I had to sit cramped in overcrowded buses because regular methods of transportation were not available. The trains have nothing to do with the issues of the strike.

The ports should not have been closed. Israel lost millions of shekels because of ports closed. No imports were let in and no exports were let out. The ports have nothing to do with the problems of the strike.

The kindergartens should not have been affected. The assistants had no reason to strike. By law with no assistant in the kindergarten, the teacher cannot open the clss, unless there is a voluntary replacement (who meets certain requirements). That means people had to stay home from work to take care of their kids who had no school, or alternatively take their kid to work with them if possible.

All the strikers did was lose support among the general public. People feel bad for them. people were saying that this strike was sort of justified. After a day of spending hours trying to figure out how to get to and from work in very uncomfortable and expensive methods, people changed their tunes. By the end of the day yesterday there was very little supprot for the unpaid workers. People were grumbling why they had to suffer like this and there was no reason for such a large strike.

I came to a revelation. If you want to lose your cause (marketing-wise) go on strike. it is the quickest way to lose support. You might get a short term victory because you hold someone over the barrel with few choices but in the long run you have lost. You hurt people who had nothing to do with the problem and lost all their support.

We all thought when Amir Peretz was appointed Defence Minister and not Finance Minister that the days of the general strikes were over and behind us. No more could Amir Peretz wreak havoc in order to flex his muscle as head of the Labor Union.

We were wrong.

Today and for the foreseeable future there will be a general strike of the Labor Union in Israel. The impetus for the strike was the fact that many (I think 80) municipalities have not paid employees for many months, some as long as 12 months! There are some other issues as well, such as changes to some pension plans, but the main issue is the unpaid employees.

So all government offices are on strike and nobody can get services. The airport is shut down so nobody can come and go. The trains are on the blink so it is pure hell getting to and from work. Ports are closed so no imports and exports will be happening. Among many other basic needs and necessities that will be put on hold until the negotiations bear success.

At first I thought this strike was one of the most, if not the most, justified strikes in the history of the Labor Union. These poor employees have not been paid salaries in up to 12 months!! That is ridiculous and should nto happen. This is the only weapon available to them. Stop working. Make it uncomfortable for the people, and by extension the government.

I heard some guy on the radio today. He was being interviewed because he has not been paid his salary in 12 months. He has no money. He has used up all his savings that have been socked away for kids education and his retirement because he has no had a salary for the past 12 months. he needed that money for basic living expenses. He paid fees and fines for breaking savings plans. Every shekel counts, literally, for him and he never knows if he will be able to feed his kids the next meal.

It is a shonda that it has come to this.

Then I heard an interview with a government minister, Meir Sheetrit. I never liked him, even when he was part of the Likud Party, let alone now that he is in Kadima. However what said in the interview sounded sensible. He was being interviewed because last year he was Assistant Minister of Finance and is partially being blamed as the cause for the current strike.

They asked Sheetrit how it came to this and why the government is not paying the salaries. I did not understand everything he said because I am not completely clear and the interaction between municipal government and federal government, but here it is to the best of my understanding. He explained that the employees are not employees of the government. If the government comes in and bails them out now, it will set a bad precedent. He explained the deficit of the affected municipalities is above 14 billion shekels(!). The government does not have that kind of money to bail them out with. He asked why they woke up when it hit 14 billion and did not take care of it when it hit 1 billion . Where were the accountants who were being paid to deal with this all along. He therefore claims it is not the governments responsibility, nor should it be.

He added that the government had been in negotiations with the municipalities and offered to bail them out at times over the past few years with certain conditions, such as putting into place plans for recovery. These plans would include layoffs of employees not needed, cancellation of projects deemed extra, cancellation of departments that are considered wasteful and "fat", etc. among others. The municipalities, and the Labor Union, refused and therefore it has come to this.

Now I do not know who is right and who is wrong. I feel bad that the poor guy has not had a salary in 12 months and can barely put food on his table. I cannot even imagine what that would be like and what I would do if I was in his situation! I feel bad for the people trying to travel, be it for business, vacations, health issues, family simchas that they might now miss. All these people will likely lose lots of money due to rescheduling and cancellations. I feel bad for the people (like me) who just need to get to work in the morning and home in the evening who now have to go through delays of hours looking for alternate transportation and extra expenses incurred.

I do not know who is right, but I hope they negotiate an end to this strike quickly.

We did think of some creative solutions to the strike, or at least those aspects of it affecting us. One such solution included contacting Arkady Gaydamak and requesting he evacuate the residents of Bet Shemesh to Tel Aviv due to our extreme "traumatic" situation. He would hire buses for us and take us to Tel Aviv so we could go to work.

Another such solution was asking Gaydamak to purchase Israel Railways and get the trains running. At least that way he would gain the profits of the railway in addition to helping all the travellers.

Another solution suggested was have Gaydamak pay off all those salaries that have not been paid. This way he would be helping people in financial ruin and emotional distress and there would be no reason for the strike.

There were some others, some suggested on radio and some just in personal conversation, and they all involved Gaydamak coming to the rescue.

And that is really the pickle we are in. Nobody expects the government to actually do its job and take care of the people and provide us with safety and security, so Gaydamak comes in and fills the void, and then the government criticizes him for it.