By John Gee

Around 200 Chinese workers sat down in protest outside the offices of Malibu-Israel, the construction company that had employed them, on July 5, reported Kav La’Oved’s August 2005 e-news. They insisted that they would not move until a company representative came to negotiate with them on their demand for payment of wages due for the month of May. They also called for the company to give them their pay slips for the entire time they had already worked.

Israel’s law on the employment of migrant workers such as these Chinese has changed recently. Instead of being hired directly by a construction company, they should now be employed by a manpower agency that will serve as a mediator. The company is meant to pay the workers’ wages to the agency, which then pays the workers.

Schemes such as this, when operated through reliable and well-run agencies, can give some protection to workers against unscrupulous employers who would deliberately try to cheat them of their wages. On the other hand, by placing greater distance between the workers and the companies that are directly using their labor, they make action to seek redress more complicated, as it is less obvious to whom workers should make representations. In this case, the Chinese workers saw Malibu-Israel as the right address for their protest.

When Kav La’Oved, an organization that seeks to defend the rights of the most disadvantaged workers in Israel—migrants, Palestinians and Israelis alike—heard about the strike, two of its staff went straight to the site to find out more about what was going on. Manager Hanna Zohar and former Chinese workers’ coordinator Reut Barak contacted a news team, and a television report containing interviews with workers, Kav La’Oved and Malibu-Israel was aired that evening.

The errant company promised to pay the manpower agency, and the Chinese workers returned to their jobs.

Also reported in the August edition of Kav La’Oved’s e-news were official statistics on migrant workers in Israel in 2004. A Central Bureau of Statistics press release put the total number of migrant workers at the end of the year at 188,000, of whom 91,500 held valid work permits. During 2004, 34,000 had entered Israel legally, with permits, and 41,000 had been deported or left voluntarily. The percentage breakdown for the workers’ countries of origin was: Thailand (31 percent), The Philippines (19 percent), Romania (14 percent), China (9 percent), former Soviet Union (9 percent), Turkey (4 percent), India (3 percent) and Bulgaria (3 percent). This suggests that the trend toward increasing employment of workers from East and Southeast Asia continues. Their proportion among the foreign workers in Israel in 2001 was around 10 percent.

The high figure for Thai workers is especially noteworthy. For most Thais, the Palestine conflict seems like something remote and complicated that does not concern them. (This is also true of most Filipinos and Chinese.)

The Thais are considered to be dependable and hardy workers. They usually know little or no English and stand out physically from the local communities, so there is little likelihood of their establishing relationships with Israeli women or putting down roots in Israel—two fears harbored by the host state. Employers frequently take advantage of their vulnerability, as a report produced by Kav La’Oved in May 2005 (‘Thai workers in Israel—The bonds of silence’) relates. It concludes:

“Systematically widespread violations of basic rights, and the ease with which agencies and employers get away with such violations indicate the lax and insufficient enforcement of worker rights. Enforcement authorities are understaffed, lack translation, and have little effective means to deter and punish violators. This situation leads to the conclusion that bringing workers to Israel from Thailand and allowing their exploitation is the government’s way to subsidize farmers.”

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This article was published in the November 2005 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.