Today, Friday, 10 international unions filed a complaint against Israel with the International Labor Organization and urged its government to pay the salaries of more than 200,000 Palestinian workers.
The 10 unions, including the International Trade Union Confederation and the Building, Timber and Public Service Workers International, which say they are present in 160 countries, said that “a complaint has been filed against the Israeli government regarding flagrant violations of the ILO’s Wage Protection Convention.”
The unions stressed that the “International Labor Organization conventions,” to which Israel belongs, “are binding legal tools,” stressing that Israel ratified the Wage Protection Convention in 1959.
Since the Al-Aqsa flood on October 7, 2023, which Israel followed with a devastating aggression against the Gaza Strip, workers from Gaza and the occupied West Bank who work in Israel, who number “more than 200,000,” have not received their salaries, according to unions.
She added that “according to International Labor Organization estimates”, the average daily wage for Palestinians working legally in Israel before the conflict was 297.3 shekels ($80.5).
As for informal workers, their weekly wages, according to the complainants, ranged between 2,100 shekels ($568.6) and 2,600 shekels ($704).
Prosecutors assert that the sudden cessation of salary payments caused a loss of income worth “several millions” of dollars to Palestinians working in Israel.
They say that “13,000 Palestinian workers” from the Gaza Strip were working in Israel before October 7, but then lost their jobs.
Therefore, the union federations are asking Israel to “ensure that these workers receive” their salaries for the month of September (which should have been disbursed as usual on October 9 or 10, 2023) and the first week of October 2023.
As for the 200,000 workers residing in the occupied West Bank, their employment contract was not necessarily terminated, but they were prevented from entering Israeli territory for nearly a year.
Since the “labor relationship” with their employers has not been officially severed, the unions are demanding that Israel ensure that the companies concerned pay the salaries owed to them since September 2023.
The unions accuse the Israeli authorities of not respecting two provisions of the International Labor Organization convention on wages:
- The first stipulates that salaries are paid “at regular intervals” during the term of the employment contract.
- The second states that “upon the expiration of the employment contract, the final payment of the full salary due will be made within a reasonable period of time.”
The complaint filed Friday is directed to the organization’s board of directors, which can decide to appoint a committee charged with examining the request and the Israeli government’s response.
In “most serious cases”, at the end of the procedure, the ILO Governing Council may establish an investigation committee.
Under the rules of the Labor Organization, the organization can form a so-called tripartite commission composed of the government and groups representing employers and workers to examine alleged violations of the Convention. This could ultimately lead to investigation and possibly sanctions.
