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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.

The specific objectives of Sawt el-Amel's Legal Department are to:

Change discriminatory labour and social security laws and economic policy by petitions to the Supreme Court and by lobbying decision-makers

 

Press for labour inspections and thorough implementation of existing labour legislation and economic development plans by individual and collective litigation and advocacy;

 

Increase Arab citizens access to employment in the public and private sectors by legal advocacy to eradicate discrimination in education and human resource policy;

 

Improve Arab women's job opportunities by pointed legal advocacy to increase vocational training options, industrial infrastructure and work support services, such as public transport and daycare. 

The Legal Department at work:

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.

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 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.  

A case study

In January 2006, Sawt el-Amel reported (Arab Women Stand Up against the Job Office, Jan. 30, 2006):

On January 17, 2006, the labour court in Nazareth set an important precedent for thousands of recipients of income benefits all over Israel, whom the employment bureaus send to workplaces they cannot reach by public transport.

In June 2005, six women from Iksal, an Arab village near Afula in the Galilee, approached Sawt el-Amel: The Laborers Voice for support. Their income benefits had been suspended for two months as a punishment for refusing to work. The womens accounts revealed the following facts: as recipients of income benefits, they are required to accept any job offer facilitated by the public employment office in Afula. On May 22, 2005, 10 unemployed women from Iksal were sent to job openings in a textile factory in the town of Yokenam. The employer had explicitly asked for applicants with cars as work begins at 7am, but none of the women drive. During the job interview, Ms. Shihinaz Darawshe, the claimant, stated that she had no car at her disposition and that therefore she would have difficulties to fulfil the requirements of the position offered to her. Based upon a written note by the employer that the applicant considers herself unsuitable for the position, the Afula job office sanctioned the 10 women for work refusal and suspended their benefits.

Sawt el-Amel took six of the 10 affected womens cases to the labour court in Nazareth, and on January 17, 2006, the court decided on Ms. Darawshe's case. The judge held that the employment bureaus have to consider the availability of transportation when sending jobseekers to workplaces. The decision further implied that the suspension of benefit payments was unjustified as the claimant cannot be defined as a "work refuser". Therefore, the National Insurance Institute will return the withheld benefit payments.

In October 2006, Sawt el-Amel reported (Laborer of the Month, October 2006):

In January 2006, Sawt el-Amel reported that "the labour court in Nazareth set an important precedent for thousands of recipients of income benefits all over Israel, whom the employment bureaus send to workplaces they cannot reach by public transport" (Sawt el-Amel, January 30, 2006). For Hiba Shalabni from Iksal, an Arab village between Nazareth and Afula in the Galilee, this precedent had an important impact.

Hiba is 22 years old, not married, and never found a job after graduating from high school four years ago. Once a week, she goes to the Afula job office to sign on for her income benefits. In May 2006, her case manager sent her to work in a plastic factory in Yokenam, a town near Haifa, about 30 km from Iksal. And this new job placement was tied to a condition: Ms. Shalabni had to work only night shifts, from 11pm to 7am. She told her case manager right away that she would not work at night because for her as a young, unmarried Arab woman, it was not appropriate to be out of the house all night. And moreover, she said, she had no car and thus no possibility to get to work at this time of the night. So, Hiba's income benefits were suspended for two months as a sanction for her job refusal.

In the previous court case, Sawt el-Amel's lawyer had brought evidence that, according to the schedules of all local bus companies, citizens of Iksal have no possibility to reach Yokenam by public transport early in the morning or in the evening. In the case of Hiba Shalabni, which Sawt el-Amel took to court in August 2006, Sawt el-Amel's lawyer provided the updated timetables and repeated the argument with reference to the January 2006 ruling.

On October 26, 2006, the Nazareth labour court decided that the National Insurance Institute must return Ms. Shalabni's benefits. The judge based her decision on the earlier ruling related to public transport accessibility of job placements.  

Related publications:

The Legal Struggle against the Wisconsin Plan Continues (Jan. 5, 2007)

First Labour Court Decisions on Wisconsin Plan (May 8, 2006)

Arab Women Stand Up against the Job Office, Part 3 (Jan. 30, 2006)

Help Revoke Discriminatory Legislation (March 24, 2005)

Arab Women Stand Up against the Job Office, Part 2 (Feb. 24, 2005)

Arab Women Stand Up against the Job Office (Jan. 17, 2005)

Footnotes: 

(1) In the 1990s, large garment companies like Delta and Kiran moved their textile production from the Galilee to Jordan. Apart from cheap labour in the neighbouring kingdom, the Peace Treaty with Jordan offered Israeli companies a cheap industrial base in so-called Qualified Industrial Zones and tax-free export to the United States. In this sense, Palestinian women citizens of Israel paid the price for peace as the closing-down of the big garment companies also killed small private enterprises in the Galilean villages.