In 2006, Sawt el-Amel developed the first long-term strategic work plan, and all stakeholders members, board of directors, staff and volunteers have provided valuable input to the drafting process. The team would also like to thank its consultant partners for the technical support and the facilitation of planning sessions.
The comprehensive three-year strategy is a result of Sawt el-Amels growing experience and a thorough evaluation of both the organisations performance and the needs of our constituency. Sawt el-Amels team has invested considerable efforts in designing the plan and is committed to realise its ambitious objectives.
We are pleased to share this document with our financial supporters as well as our partners in action and look forward to continuing well-established and developing new partnerships in order to advance towards our common goals.
Download summary of original document, issued in January 2007 (pdf)
Programme 2008
The first annual stakeholder review of Sawt el-Amels Strategic Work Plan 2007-2009 led to slight changes in the programme setup, while goals and target groups remain unchanged:
Our Organisation:
Sawt el-Amel/The Laborer's Voice is an independent grassroots organisation founded by Palestinian Arab workers in Nazareth in 2000, in order to defend and promote the rights of Arab citizens in Israel to work and social security. In particular, Sawt el-Amel strives to:
Eradicate systematic discrimination by state and general public in access to labour and social security, which is one of the root causes of the continuous socio-economic crisis within the Palestinian Arab community in Israel;
Promote awareness of the rights to decent work and social security among the unemployed and working Arab citizens in Israel, including the right to organise and stand up for one's rights collectively;
Improve the socio-economic status of Arab women and involve them in all stages of decision-making and public activism.
In order to reach these overall objectives, Sawt el-Amel takes legal action, engages in grassroots organising, educates the public, networks and conducts advocacy. The organisation works on local, national and international levels.
Our Constituency:
Every fifth citizen of Israel is a Palestinian Arab, and these 1.4 million people are largely excluded from the benefits of citizenship and the national economy. Systematic discrimination by state and general public permeates every sphere of public and private life, including employment and social security.
In 2006, 52% of all Arab citizens inside the Green Line (1) lived below the poverty line, as compared to 16% of Jewish Israelis (National Insurance Institute, 2007). Only 19% of Arab citizens enter tertiary education (post 12th grade), compared to 43% of Jewish Israelis, and accordingly, more than 50% of the employed Arab labour force works in the manual labour sector (industry, manufacturing and agriculture), while only 24% of Jewish Israelis work in these low-wage jobs. Moreover, in 2003, 46 out of 47 towns with an above-average unemployment rate were Arab localities (Israel Employment Bureau, 2003). Thus, the vast majority of Arab citizens in Israel belong to what is traditionally considered the working class, though many workers and heads of households have been temporarily or permanently out of work.
Arab job-seekers are systematically denied employment in skilled and high-wage positions, particularly in public service and (formerly) government-owned companies. For instance, only 2% of Israels high-tech employees are Arab, while they make up 10% of the countrys engineering graduates (Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development, 2007). According to data from 2002, only 0.8% of approximately 50,000 employees of government companies - including water and electricity, telecommunication and port authorities - are Arabs (Sikkuy, 2006). The employment situation in the civil service is similar. For instance, in 2004, only 5.5% of Israels civil servants were Arabs, 56% of whom worked in the Health Ministry.
Once an Arab citizen is out of work, the social safety net does not work in the same way as it would work for Jewish Israelis. In 2005, transfer payments from the National Insurance Institute (i.e. social benefits) succeeded to lift only 11% of poor Arab citizens out of poverty, while the welfare state did work for 47% of economically weak Jews. This extreme gap suggests that there are institutionalised obstacles that deny Arab citizens access to social security and welfare.
Moreover, no serious action is being taken to increase labour force participation of Arab women or to improve their employment conditions. Only 17% of Arab women participate in the civilian labour force, compared to 53% of Jewish women. In 2005, only 24,000 Arab women in Israel worked in full-time positions (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2006). Yet, Israels last Country Report to be examined by the UN CEDAW Committee (2) dedicated only one page out of a total of 186 to the extremely low labour force participation and disproportionately high unemployment and poverty rates among Arab women.
Regarding working conditions, in September 2006, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour published a survey which revealed that 92% of employers checked in 580 workplaces in central and southern Israel are in violation of labour laws, and the Minister commented, "One of the ways of obtaining the goal of decreasing poverty and social inequality is enforcing labour laws" (Haaretz, 27/09/06). In August 2007, the Ministry published another survey which found that 63% of low-waged workers (below NIS 4,500/month) lack even the most basic understanding of their salaries and had no idea what the minimum wage was (Haaretz, 21/08/07).
All the above-mentioned issues are facets of a common root cause: systematic ethnic discrimination against the indigenous population combined with economic exploitation of the poor. In order to tackle this complex problem, Palestinian Arab workers and unemployed in Israel need an address for collective action, a role that Sawt el-Amel is committed to fill.
Our Work:
Our work is divided into three programme and one administrative department: Legal Department; Grassroots Organising Forum (GOF), including Alternative Wisconsin Centre (AWC) and Womens Platform; International Relations Department; and Management and Administration. All Departments are closely interlinked and cannot carry out their work without the input and support from others.
Sawt el-Amel is a democratic organisation and owned by its constituency. To combine our grassroots character with professional programme implementation, we adhere to the following principles: participatory decision-making; gender mainstreaming in programme and governance; cooperation with civil-society partners; strategic organisational and project planning; financial accountability; transparent staff policy.
1) Legal Department
The Legal Department is the backbone of Sawt el-Amel: it achieves tangible outcomes for individuals and measurable impact on the collective level, and the legal protection it offers helps build trust and self-confidence among Sawt el-Amels members to stand up and claim their rights as a group.
The Legal Department treats workers rights as human rights and uses domestic labour legislation as well as international UN and ILO standards for its arguments. Sawt el-Amel is the only organisation in Israel with the specific mandate to provide legal representation for low-waged workers and unemployed in the Arab economy in both individual and collective cases.
In close interaction with Sawt el-Amels other programme activities, the Legal Department significantly contributes to the organisations long-term goal of emancipating Arab workers in Israel through an organised, collective struggle for social justice, from which all economically marginalised population groups in the region, notwithstanding their ethnic, national, or cultural belonging, will ultimately benefit.
2) Grassroots Organising Forum (GOF)
Arab workers and their families in Israel have no institution that advocates their needs and provides a safe space for them to meet and learn. In the past years, Sawt el-Amel has gradually established itself as the trusted address for Arab workers and unemployed, and in the years to come, the Grassroots Organising Forum will continue this commitment and expand its local activities. The two main initiatives of the GOF are the Womens Platform and the Alternative Wisconsin Centre.
2a) Womens Platform
Due to the nature of Sawt el-Amel's mandate protecting the economically disadvantaged more than 60% of the organisation's members and beneficiaries are women. Palestinian Arab women in Israel suffer from multiple forms of discrimination based on race, gender and socio-economic status. They are the least educated, the least employed, and the least represented in Israeli society.
The Womens Platform was established in September 2005, as a result of Sawt el-Amels work with participants of Israels work-first programme Wisconsin Plan in Nazareth. The project had an unprecedented impact as the women involved in the activities revealed an unexpected degree of motivation, determination and leadership potential.
The Womens Platform soon began to attract the attention of women who are not participants of the Wisconsin Plan. Now, the Platform is developing into a network of local womens groups and individuals across the Galilee. For most members of the Platform, it is the first time they get involved in public activism, and therefore, education and training are of crucial importance for the future success of this grassroots initiative.
2b) Alternative Wisconsin Centre (AWC)
Since March 2005, four months before the actual launch of the Wisconsin Plan, Sawt el-Amel has untiringly mobilised grassroots activism and conducted information campaigns challenging the exploitative nature of Israels welfare-to-work experiment through its project Alternative Wisconsin Centre. In July 2007, at the end of the two-year pilot period, the Wisconsin Plan underwent drastic changes, a major success for Sawt el-Amel and its partners. However, the AWC continues its work, particularly focused on the village of Ein Mahel, which was included in the Nazareth pilot area in December 2007.
3) International Relations Department
Since 2005, Sawt el-Amel has engaged in international relations. This decision reflects the organisations commitment to international workers solidarity and the conviction that international actors do have the possibility to increase the impact of Sawt el-Amels work. Activities include publications of reports, including shadow reports to international organisations, joint advocacy campaigns with international partners, all aimed at raising awareness and instigating action to realise Sawt el-Amels objectives.
The Public Relations Department targets:
International organisations (ILO, UN bodies, EU institutions) and governments (incl. embassies);
International non-governmental community (labour movement, human rights and development NGOs, mainstream and alternative media);
The global political citizen who forms part of international public opinion.
Our impact in 2007:
Sawt el-Amels work brings about structural change on various levels, notably the legal and policy levels, the community level, and the international level.
Policy change: the Wisconsin Plan
In July 2007, at the end of the two-year pilot period, the Wisconsin Plan underwent drastic changes as a result of continued civil society pressure spearheaded by Sawt el-Amel, of Knesset initiatives, and of the inter-ministerial Dinur Committee report, which in general terms reaffirmed the criticism voiced by civil society.
The most significant structural changes are related to the profit system and the personal circumstances of the unemployed: the profit system was revised, so that the implementing companies no longer profit from a closed welfare file but only when they find permanent jobs for the unemployed. Moreover, participation of people over 45 years and of long-term unemployed who had not found work during the pilot period is now voluntary, and single mothers and persons with health problems are treated with more flexibility. Due to these amendments, the number of participants dropped drastically from close to 15,000 to 5,000 in all pilot areas. Nazareths main Wisconsin centre Beit al-Abiad (the White House) was closed.
Sawt el-Amel evaluates the amendments to the Wisconsin Plan as a major success, and the nature of the policy change suggests that decision-makers were strongly influenced by civil society pressure exerted by Sawt el-Amel and its colleagues. However, as an organisation of workers, Sawt el-Amel remains opposed to the Wisconsin Plan as a neo-liberal policy privatising employment service and social security.
Setting legal precedents: Social protection for employees of family businesses
Sawt el-Amels legal work sets precedents. For instance, in 2007, it achieved an important decision in relation to employees of family businesses. For years, Sawt el-Amel has been in correspondence with the National Insurance Institute (NII) in order to grant social benefits (maternity and unemployment) to workers employed in family businesses. The NII generally assumes that such work relations are fake and that fictitious pay slips are issued to family members in order to cash in public money. In the Arab community, family businesses make up a large part of the economy, and employees are systematically denied social benefits. Finally, the case of Ms. Noor Safadi brought change. The labour court decided in December 2007 that the NII must pay withheld maternity benefits to her. This decision can now be used in all future cases involving employees of family businesses in order to speed up the bureaucratic process.
Organising and leadership: a new Womens Platform
The year 2007 was marked by significant developments in Sawt el-Amels gender-related work. In spring and summer 2007, Sawt el-Amel implemented the pilot project Grassroots Womens Leadership Training During this process, a new branch of the Womens Platform was established in the village of Majd el-Krum in the Galilee, with a core group of ten activist women from the surrounding villages. Due to the activism of the local Womens Platform, Sawt el-Amel will realise its goal to open a permanent branch office in the northern Galilee (i.e. in Majd el-Krum) by 2008.
International solidarity: joint campaigns
As part of its identity as an organisation of workers, Sawt el-Amel attaches major importance to international cooperation and solidarity. Early in 2007, Sawt el-Amel and the Christian Union of Service Workers in Belgium (LBC/CNE) launched a joint campaign to stop the Wisconsin Plan, focusing on the privatisation of social security, a growing phenomenon also in the European Union. A delegation from Sawt el-Amel was invited to Belgium.
Due to continuous lobbying by the International Trade Union Committee in Solidarity with Palestinian Women from Nazareth, Sawt el-Amel was invited to informal meetings with ILO officials in the organisations headquarters in Geneva in 2007.
Footnotes:
(1) Armistice line of 1949, separating the newly established state of Israel from Lebanon, Syrias Golan Heights, Jordan, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza and the Sinai.
(2) United Nations expert committee on the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); 33rd session, July 2005.
