After prolonged discussion, Histadrut Chair Arnon Bar-David presented last week the principles of the agreements between the Histadrut and the Finance Ministry regarding the 2025 budget. Highlights of the agreement include preventing cuts to tax-free savings plans for employees and preventing a freeze on the minimum wage.
“The Israeli spirit is about moving forward, dealing with the situation,” Bar-David said. “We are also on the front in all of our workplaces, the Histadrut branches and unions, Na’amat [the women’s organization associated with the Histadrut], in the committees. We’ve felt the pressure over the past year. We’re at a crazy level that I can’t recall in the past.”
Bar-David noted that he had doubts about going into an agreement with the current government. “The decision was to go with national responsibility,” he said. “The country is on the edge, the economy is on the edge, and hope is on the edge.”
He emphasized that the Histadrut has always provided strength needed by Israeli society during times of distress, “out of commitment to industry, commitment to the values that the Histadrut took on with its founding.”
“We are standing opposite a complicated government, with a minister not from our camp who sees everything opposite the way we do,” Bar-David said, referring to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose economic policy has been characterized as pro-small government, anti-worker, and anti-welfare.
Bar-David said that Smotrich had tried to use the war to bring to reality his dreams of cutting public services and cutting support for civil servants. One attempted cut was to the “training fund,” a short-term tax-free saving plan provided to workers. Getting rid of the training funds was “their dream that they bring out each year,” Bar-David said.
“The savings accounts of the training funds are our basis for replacing a car, helping a child get married, living,” he said. “That was in our souls, and we managed to prevent harm to them.”
The Histadrut also managed to avoid a planned freeze on the minimum wage. “That would save a lot of money, but it would hurt the workers on the lowest levels,” Bar-David said. “There was heavy pressure on me to allow a freeze [to wages] in the public sector, but it won’t happen. In April the minimum wage will rise to around 6,200 shekels [about $1,700 per month], much more than we once thought.”
He said the Histadrut also managed to avoid freeze to pensions and government allowances and got the Finance Ministry to agree to four paid long weekends for civil servants in 2025 and 2026.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Leah Schwartz.
