Israel’s national union of crane operators is preparing for a potential strike next week following resistance to collective agreement negotiations from the Israel Builders Association, the group representing employers in the construction field.
“We are fighting first and foremost for safe work, that crane operators won’t need to choose between work safety and job security,” Roee Weinstein, chair of the national crane operators union, told Davar. The negotiations, in which the employers organization have consistently delayed participation, also relate to crane operators wages. While other wages in the construction industry have risen, crane operators’ wages have been stagnant.
According to Weinstein, the Israel Builders Association has used every pretext available to put off negotiations, which it agreed to hold in the past agreement signed eight years ago. “In the agreement signed in 2017, the contractors committed to meet with us in a number of months in order to come to an agreement about critical safety issues regarding protecting people’s lives on work sites,” he explained. “In practice, eight years have passed, and they’re refusing to move forward and constantly searching for excuses.”
“We’re talking about issues that could save lives, the costs of which would be negligible for the construction industry,” Weinstein said. “Yet for some reason, the Israel Builders Association is refusing to move forward on them.”
He noted that during the war, many crane operators also failed to receive the four shekel ($1) per hour wage increase for working in dangerous areas in the line of potential missile fire, as was agreed to in the collective agreement.
“Crane operators today work for the most part 12-hour shifts, and they’re sometimes required to work more, which is illegal,” Weinstein said. “This is also a significant issue in terms of safety, and we’re also interested in addressing it through the collective agreement framework. We want to ensure an improvement in working hours and rest time for crane operators in the industry, who need to be focused and alert for the entire shift.”
The labor dispute was officially announced more than two weeks ago by Yitzhak Moyal, chair of the Histadrut construction workers union. After two weeks, the period during which workers must wait for measures to be taken are not allowed to strike expires.
“In 2017, we proved for the first time that crane operators know how to strike, when we led a six-hour strike in the Israeli construction industry,” Weinstein said. “Back then, the contractors didn’t believe us. They thought that every one of us was isolated in the crane cabin, and that our organizing wasn’t serious. But during the moment of truth, the crane operators came down from the crane, and the contractors were forced to return to the negotiating table. Since then, the union has only gotten stronger.”
Today, nearly 2,000 crane operators belong to the union. Union members are currently speaking personally with other crane operators throughout the country in preparation for the potential strike.
“Since the first collective agreement was signed, the crane operators know that unionizing is the most effective tool for effecting change in working conditions and safety,” Weinstein said. “We hope that the Israel Builders Association will sit down, talk with us, bridge the existing gaps—and will prevent the need for a strike. But according to need, we know that the workers are behind us. If we get to a strike, you can estimate that the damage the contractors face will be infinitely higher than [what would be caused by] our demands, which are reasonable and logical.”
This article was translated from Hebrew and edited for context by Leah Schwartz.
