"Like many capitalist democracies, Israel has seen the rapid erosion of the stable job with peripheral benefits and union protection. It is estimated that over 40% of families under the poverty line are living off wages, not welfare."

Israel's labor market reflects the Zionist state's internal contradictions and migrant laborers bear the brunt. Are these contradictions belatedly coming to a head?

In May, a group of young reporters and photographers from one of Israel's most popular news sites decided to protest the government's pigheaded insistence on deporting the children of migrant workers. They took a group of children from various countries into a pastoral setting, clothed them in the style of the Zionist movement's early pioneers, and filmed them singing the popular songs of Shavuot - the Jewish festival celebrating the giving of the Torah, which has become Israel's equivalent of a grain harvest festival.

The message was clear: these children speak Hebrew, they know the traditional Jewish festival songs better than many young Jewish Israelis, they are part of our society - they "have no other country," in the popular Israeli phrase - and they should be allowed to remain.

The message, however, was highly problematic.

In their commendable zeal to insist on the rights of these workers, to highlight racism and encourage Israeli society to accept the other, they inadvertently reflected the prejudices and contradictions of Israeli society. Only by showing how "Israeli" these children are (read: Jewish pioneering Zionist Israeli) can they persuade us to accept their presence.

It is here in Israel's complex labor market that the fault lines between liberal democratic values and Zionism come to the fore.

Latest Addition to Fragmented Labor Market

The migrant workers are the latest addition to a labor market which has historically been managed according to Zionism's aims: before 1948, the main aim was Jewish settlement in Palestine. After the state was established, efforts turned to the absorption of mass Jewish immigration.

To achieve these aims, a two-tiered labor market was encouraged by pre-state yishuv leaders, with Jews on the upper tier and Palestinians on the lower. The Palestinians who were granted citizenship after 1948 continued to hold positions on the lower tier.

Following the Six-Day war in 1967, Palestinians from the newly occupied territories entered the market, providing a ready source of cheap labor. Then, with the first intifada and the Oslo "peace process" of the 1990s, the Rabin government implemented a policy of "closure" - an economic separation to complement the expected political separation - and Palestinians found their livelihoods cut off.

Israeli employers, particularly in the agriculture and construction industries, demanded a new source of cheap labor to replace the Palestinians from the territories. Soldiering on with the peace process and barely commanding a majority in the government, then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin could not afford to allow another group to voice its opposition - especially a group with such a powerful lobby. The answer was migrant labor.

The number of "foreign workers" (as they are known in Hebrew) grew rapidly. They came from Romania, Turkey, China (mainly in construction), Philippines (mainly nursing and homecare), and Thailand (mainly agriculture). Numbers reached a peak during the early years of this decade, when over 300,000 migrant laborers worked in Israel - a huge number for a country of only 7.5 million people (over 7% of the workforce).

Today, it is estimated that there are some 200,000 migrant laborers in Israel, of whom more than half are "illegal", having outstayed their visas or violated the terms of their employment (often unintentionally). These migrant laborers are exposed to the same dangers and rights violations suffered by migrant laborers around the world, with local variations and tricks.

Wages are often below the legal minimum because the work day is long and extra hours often go unreported. Wages are sometimes paid in arrears while passports and other documents are held by employers as a way of maintaining control and preventing the workers from seeking better terms elsewhere.

Many are subject to dangerous work practices, such as exposure to pesticides, or work on sites which fail to conform to safety protocols. This has led to fatal work accidents involving migrant workers.

Social benefits such as sick pay, paid vacation and dismissal compensation are almost non-existent. Wage slips, if they are given at all, are regularly falsified - a relatively easy ploy given that few workers read the language in which the slips are written. Living quarters are often unfit for human habitation.

The Foreign Workers (Prohibition of Unlawful Employment and Assurance of Fair Conditions) Law-1991 offers a legal basis for improving conditions, but violation of labor laws is the norm, fines for such violations are often not collected, and bribery is rife.

Migrant workers pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of working in Israel to agencies and brokers here and in their countries of origin. Manpower agencies in Israel are authorized to charge up to NIS 3,401 ($880) but the workers themselves pay upwards of $9,000 to various links in the chain that brings them here. The Knesset's Migrant Workers Committee has estimated that over 70% of this money reaches Israelis.

The government also benefits. According to NGO Kav LaOved, levies accruing to the state from migrant worker registration and employer application fees amount to an annual NIS 200 million ($52 million).

According to a report by State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss from earlier this year, these workers continue to pay exorbitant sums, despite government commitment (a 2005 cabinet resolution) to work through the UN-affiliated International Organization for Migration and to reach bilateral agreements with governments of states from which the workers originate. Thus the workers arrive deep in debt – a situation which ensures their obedience and docility.

Contradictory Policies

Migrant labor is now a central issue in the public arena. Politicians not known for their liberal views are jumping on the bandwagon too, including former defense minister and former chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, who already demonstrated his bandwagon-leaping capabilities when he joined the centrist party Kadima.

During a demonstration in May against the deportation of "illegal" migrant children, Mofaz spoke to a crowd that peace activists can only dream about - a broad spectrum of ideologies and political positions united by the moving photos of innocent children which brought out our best instincts of compassion and understanding. MK Nitzan Horowitz from the Zionist leftwing party Meretz and the tireless MK Dov Khenin from the communist Hadash were also present.

For very different reasons, the Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel is currently appealing the government's decision to deport 3,000 migrant workers. This latest deportation is intended to reduce the number allowed into the country each year for the construction industry from 8,000 to 5,000. The Association claims that the deportation is a grave violation of the workers' rights, and that there are no skilled Israelis to take their place. Moreover, it makes dire predictions of building projects put on hold, housing prices rising and even the collapse of the economy.

Meanwhile, the government has been running an obnoxious campaign playing on the worst nationalist instincts. Billboards and internet sites carried ads exhorting Israelis not to hire illegal migrant workers. The faces appealing to us from the ads are Everyman Israelis who'd have us believe they are unemployed because of these illegal workers.

Among those targeted are some 20,000 refugees, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan. According to the Knesset Research and Information Center, another 5,291 have already entered since the beginning of the year, mostly via the Egyptian border (slightly less than the number of olim, new Jewish immigrants legally able to obtain immediate citizenship).

Some 80% of these are defined as asylum seekers, therefore Israel cannot deport them. But this did not prevent Interior Minister Eli Yishai from accusing them of "importing" AIDS, hepatitis, tuberculosis and drugs into Israel. He also accused migrant worker parents of using their children as "human shields," thereby introducing the language of war and terror into an already highly-charged issue.

Capitalist Demands, Zionist Logic

In fact, the Association of Contractors and Builders is right (though the general danger to the economy is undoubtedly hyperbole). Deportation would indeed violate workers' rights; however, where were the contractors and builders when these workers' rights were being violated during their time laboring in Israel? And why are there no Israelis able to take their place?

The answer is straightforward: employers in sectors with high numbers of "foreign workers" have got used to having a cheap labor force on tap. Their value - like that of migrant workers throughout the world - lies in their exploitability and lack of rights, or failure to enforce the rights they have. Israelis, on the other hand, are unwilling to work under those terms, while peripheral benefits and minimum wage enforcement for Israelis would increase employers' labor costs significantly.

There are two groups of workers who are willing, able and even keen to do this work: Israel's Palestinian citizens and Palestinians from the occupied territories.

However, their presence is regarded by most Israeli Jews as even more threatening than migrant labor. In June, notices were plastered up around the religious town of Bnei Brak (part of the greater Tel Aviv metropolitan area), openly warning residents against hiring Arabs. The notices played on Israeli fears of Arab terror, hinting at vagrancy and the "unmentionable" deeds of the foreigner in our midst. The organizers also invoked halachic (Jewish legal) injunctions against hiring Arabs, noting that this encouraged Arabs to stay and thereby strengthen their grip on the Holy Land.

Others may take more subtle steps to dissuade employers from taking on Arabs - the call for "Hebrew work" is one such step, with roots in the yishuv - but the Bnei Brak message is widely accepted. Even the lawyers of the Association of Contractors and Builders felt obliged to pay lip service to this idea, saying the Association would prefer Hebrew work if only they could get it.

Deterioration of Employment Norms

So - the government deports while government ministers protest the deportations; the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Labor issues permits for the import of more migrant workers while the Interior Minister highlights the "danger" to Israeli society that these migrants allegedly pose; Hebrew work is popularly demanded while employers complain that no "Hebrews" are willing or able to take on the jobs.

But underlying this apparent confusion is a problem the government is unwilling to recognize - and it has rarely been challenged on this point: the deterioration of employment norms.

Like many capitalist democracies, Israel has seen the rapid erosion of the stable job with peripheral benefits and union protection. An increasing number of people are compelled to labor for low wages in temporary, part-time and unstable positions. Taking advantage of lack of labor law enforcement or using legal loopholes, often via manpower companies, employers avoid having to grant benefits or respect workers' rights. The phenomenon of "working poor" is growing: it is estimated that over 40% of families under the poverty line are living off wages, not welfare.

Unemployment hovers around 7%, apparently a slight improvement from last year and down from the double-digit unemployment of 2004, but the figures give no indication of the employment conditions these previously unemployed people have been forced to accept. In its battle against unemployment, the government blames the unemployed, even though having a job in Israel doesn't necessarily mean breaking out of poverty.

Partly as an attempt to place a buffer between itself and "service consumers", the government is privatizing in the field of welfare and employment too. The so-called Wisconsin program, which gave private firms the authority and responsibility to assist the chronically unemployed to move "from welfare to workfare," is a prime example - even though it was discontinued after ministers failed to agree on its continuation. Despite being judged a resounding failure by almost all who took part, including NGOs, unions and even then Labor Minister Eli Yishai, others continue to sing its praises, including the prime minister, finance minister and operators of the program - and alternative programs are currently being considered.

One such program offers families a "personal trainer" to help them get back to work. Minister of Welfare and Social Services Isaac Herzog has said explicitly that this program would fill the void left by Wisconsin. This program too will be operated via private firms, and is expected to begin in the fall of 2010.

Whether by intention or through lack of understanding, the government consistently fails to tackle the real problem through macroeconomic management, and continues to shift responsibility onto the workers and unemployed. "Work" has been depoliticized: getting people into jobs has become a technical issue that ignores the reality of Israel's fragmented labor market and the substandard employment it offers.

What to Do?

Any government serious about tackling the problem of violation of workers rights and promoting the welfare of all those under Israel's authority must accept responsibility for the three main worker groups whose presence is perceived as a threat to Israeli Jews.

It must abandon the dangerous illusion that the Palestinians in the occupied territories are independent of the Israeli economy, and afford them the rights, protection and opportunities that all workers should receive - at least until a comprehensive settlement is reached between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel deliberately prevented the development of a viable economy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after 1967, and must take responsibility for the lack of jobs there.

It must accept Palestinian citizens of Israel as full citizens in every way, and concern itself with their welfare on every level, particularly in the job market where discrimination and racism are the norm.

It must halt the import of migrant labor and compel employers to take on Israelis while enforcing labor laws concerning minimum wage and peripheral benefits. At the same time, it must secure the rights of migrant workers and asylum seekers already in the country and afford them any assistance and protection that may be required, including allowing some to remain in the country if they should so desire. In a globalized labor market with such extensive cross-border movement of workers, we cannot allow workers' rights to be dependent on citizenship - though Israel would do well to grant citizenship to many migrant workers who have built their lives here.

Most importantly, Israel must create jobs that offer stability, a decent wage and full peripheral benefits. Until these are given priority as required for the creation of a healthy, egalitarian democracy, it will be almost impossible to improve the lot of any worker groups - Israeli Jews or others - no matter how many privatization initiatives and welfare-to-workfare programs are implemented.

But no government is likely to take any of these steps as long as Israeli society remains clamped between the twin arms of capitalism and Zionism.

Yonatan Preminger is originally from Israel, but grew up in the UK, and returned about 9 years ago. He is about to begin doctoral research into new forms of political representation and participation of workers in Israel's changing and problematic democracy. He lives in Tel Aviv and is active in the field of workers' rights.