Word: histadrut
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...through the streets shouting "Begin go home!" One-day strikes closed down the postal service in Tel Aviv, the national airline El Al, Tel Aviv's airport and the major seaports of Ashdod and Haifa. Those and other token work stoppages were ordered by the 1.2 million-member Histadrut labor federation, whose Secretary-General Yeruham Meshel warned Begin: "If you have decided on a free economy, we will not agree to keep only wages under controls. We will not agree to have the wages and standard of living of workers go down, down, down...
...basic commodities, the government forced a 25% rise in the price of such staples as bread, cheese, milk and chicken; gasoline rose from $1.87 per gal. to $2.40. Although opposition politicians warned that some cuts in the defense budget threatened Israel's security and the big labor combine Histadrut called a desultory one-hour strike, the majority took the bad news in stride. What annoyed many people most of all was that there had not been, as usual, any advance leaks of the measures, so housewives were unable to go on a last minute bargain-buying spree...
Begin was faced with a reminder last week that his most formidable opposition-the Labor Party-may be down but is not quite out. About 1.4 million Israelis who belong to Histadrut, the giant trade union federation, went to the polls to vote for 1,501 delegates to the next convention. The Labor Party, which has dominated Histadrut since pioneering days, kept control with 56.6% of the vote. This ensures Labor's continued control of a mammoth conglomerate of unions, insurance and pension plans, companies and even banks that controls nearly 25% of Israel's economic production...
Born in Poland, Peres was taken to Palestine at eleven. While still in high school, he joined the Haganah, the famed underground Jewish self-defense organization. In his early 20s, he persuaded the Histadrut youth movement to support David Ben-Gurion. The statesman soon began to groom Peres for a political career. Wearying of desk jobs in the newly established Ministry of Defense, Peres took off for a brief vacation in the U.S. in 1950. He learned English in three months and took advanced courses in philosophy and economics at New York City's New School for Social Research...
...still, the government has ruled out most of the measures that might help reduce inflation. Israeli leaders deem it out of the question politically to cut defense expenditures, which swallowed 42% of the $12 billion budget in 1976. Welfare payments ($2.2 billion last year) are another political untouchable. The Histadrut, Israel's all-powerful labor federation, is dead set against wage controls; workers strike like clockwork to protest high prices, and nearly always win raises from management. Last week in the Knesset (parliament), the right-wing opposition party, Likud, pushed into committee four bills requiring arbitration in labor disputes...