For jobless Arabs:

Somewhere To Turn To

by Wehbe Badarneh

EMPLOYMENT-bureau officials in Nazareth once had a comfortable life. Thousands of jobless Arabs used to pass through their offices and leave empty-handed. The decrees of the clerks went unchallenged. The employment officials got bonuses for cutting the number of the unemployed through tricks, whereby they could categorize workers as "refusers". Now those halcyon days are over. Arab workers have a place to turn to when their rights are violated. On January 13, the Workers Advice Center (WAC) opened a new and bigger office in Nazareth. In its first convention in May 1998, WAC declared that one of its main activities would be the defense of the unemployed. Since then workers have been coming to us in droves. We have contact now with more than a thousand.
Recently we won a case involving nineteen women on which we reported two issues ago. The government employment bureau had sent them to pick olives in Beit Shean, but the workplace turned out to be fictitious. The women were labeled "refusers" and deprived of their benefits. We followed the case from its beginning. When we saw that the usual appeals committee was dragging its feet, we sued and won.

Lately we discovered another such fraud. In the third week of February, WAC learned that the government employment bureau in Nazareth had sent 25 jobless Arab women to a textile sweatshop located in a private house. The place has ten sewing machines, already occupied, and two women work in packaging. The manager informed the 25 women that she wanted to create three more work places. The salary would be 1200 NIS a month (the minimum wage in Israel is 2600 NIS), and they would have to pay for their own transportation. Thus the pay would work out to be lower than unemployment compensation. The idea was to get the job-seekers to refuse. When some agreed, the manager said she would call them on March 10. This has aroused our suspicion that the jobs were fictional in the first place.
In fact, WAC has encountered this particular sweatshop before. In December 1998, dozens of workers were sent there. When they refused to accept the illegal conditions, they were denied benefits. We continue to investigate the matter. Here is yet another case: On December 14, 1998, a group of unemployed women from the Muslim village of Ein Mahel were sent to find jobs at a pork butchery in Yafia, near Nazareth. The women refused to work there. The plant's manager told Challenge that he knows how problematic such work is for Muslims; when he sent his original request to the government unemployment bureau, he emphasized his preference for people who do not mind working with pork – for example, non-orthodox Russian immigrants. The bureau decided, however, to send him jobless women from a purely Muslim village. In a campaign that received wide publicity, WAC charged the bureau manager with a deliberate attempt to gain the women's refusal, so that he could remove them from the job-seekers list and eliminate their benefits. At first the bureau threatened to sue WAC for libel, but ultimately it apologized for the "mistake".

The government's system is clear. Its bureaus send Arab job-seekers to types of work that are known for their tediousness and difficulty (for example, sewing, cleaning, care of the elderly) or to companies that are known for paying beneath the minimum wage (some are unreliable in paying at all). Many of the jobless, unwilling to work under such conditions, do not bother to go for an interview. Others go, hear the conditions, and refuse. Both groups are then categorized as "refusers", and for three months they vanish from the statistics. The government then chalks up progress in bringing down unemployment.
On a daily basis, the employment bureaus harass and intimidate workers. On February 1, for instance, a guard at the bureau struck Nihaya Haj, a WAC member. Yet the problem goes much deeper. It relates to the absence of work places for Arabs in Galilee. In the present economic recession, Jews get priority. All the factories, moreover, are located in Jewish towns. Arab workers are sent there only when the jobs are such that no Jewish worker wants them. This structural discrimination can change only when Arab towns are permitted to have industry too. Until then, WAC will remain the watchdog of the Arab workers.