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Vol. 82/No. 1 January 1, 2018
(lead article)
Teva workers in Israel join together to fight layoffs
Dec. 18 protest by Teva Pharmaceutical workers outside factory in Jerusalem.
BY SETH GALINSKY
In one of the largest labor actions in Israel in recent years, thousands
of workers joined a four-hour general strike Dec. 17 in solidarity with
Teva Pharmaceutical workers fighting layoffs and plant closings
announced Dec. 14.
Teva, the largest generic drug company in the world and one of Israel’s
biggest companies, plans to lay off 25 percent of its workers, including
1,750 of its 6,400 workers in Israel.
In Jerusalem, workers barricaded themselves inside a Teva factory and
wouldn’t allow supervisors to leave. All 11 of Teva’s factories and
research facilities went on strike Dec. 19.
“The layoffs are a big blow to working people in Israel,” Eliran Koznik,
a Teva worker and Histadrut union leader in Kfar Saba near Tel Aviv,
said by phone Dec. 18. “A lot of people believed that if you worked for
Teva, you would have financial security until you got your pensions.
It’s not like that anymore.”
“Workers at Teva come from all walks of life, Jewish, Arab citizens of
Israel, immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia. And it’s half women, half
men,” he said. “The workers are not the problem. The workers are the
solution.”
While Teva produces scores of generic drugs, its biggest profit maker
was Copaxone, a drug for treating multiple sclerosis. But that patent
expired and Teva faces increased competition.
In a bid to strengthen its edge against rivals, Teva last year bought
Activis, a U.K.-based generic drug company, saddling itself with $35
billion in debt just as prices for many generics were falling.
Over the last decade the Israeli government gave the company some $6.2
billion in tax breaks and subsidies. That, along with ostentatious
benefits to top executives, irks many of the workers.
“Recently all of management got big bonuses,” Koznik said. “Why should
workers have to pay for bad administration?”
Teva workers learned about the cuts from the media. “Everything about
the layoffs and closing of some of the factories was a surprise to the
workers,” Koznik said. “We want Teva to negotiate with us.”
The composition of the workforce at Teva is not unusual for Israel. The
development of industry and growing numbers of Arabs, Jews and
immigrants toiling side by side have opened the door to deepening class
struggle as today’s crisis of capitalism unfolds.
A Dec. 15 article by Matti Friedman, Jerusalem-based correspondent for
the Toronto Globe and Mail, described a piece of the changing relations
between Jewish and Arab workers.
Friedman notes that after President Donald Trump announced Dec. 6 that
Washington would officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and
eventually move its embassy there, “Arab leaders called for ‘days of
rage’ and a chorus of Western observers predicted an explosion.”
But that’s not what happened. The protesters who showed up at Old
Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate “were outnumbered by journalists,” Friedman
says. “There weren’t spontaneous mass celebrations on the Jewish side or
mass disturbances on the Arab side. The past week has been fairly normal.”
“Nearly half the city’s Arab workers are now employed in Jewish areas,”
he said. “Salaries in Palestinian homes increasingly come from Israeli
employers,” so Palestinians and Jews in Israel “are becoming more
tightly entwined, and everyone has more to lose if things fall apart.”
Friedman says that anyone wanting to understand Jerusalem today needs to
visit the city’s Talpiot industrial zone. A big supermarket there is in
“an Israeli area,” he said, but of the 50-odd workers I counted among
the aisles of produce and cereal, at least two-thirds were Palestinian.”
A Jewish cashier was serving three Muslim women. At a SuperPharm an Arab
female pharmacist was “serving a Jewish woman with a prescription, a
Jewish cashier and two Arab guys stocking the shelves,” Friedman wrote.
“Ten years ago, it would have been remarkable to see Palestinian
customers or salespeople in a Jewish part of town, but today what’s
remarkable is how unremarkable it’s become.”
A new poll in Israel reports that 84.3 percent of Arabs and 63.7 percent
of Jews believe they should coexist. The study reports 84.2 percent of
Arabs want their children to learn Hebrew, while 56.4 percent of Jews
think their kids need to learn Arabic.
Anti-Israel boycott loses steam
This reality makes it harder to paint Israel as a pariah nation or an
outcast that should be destroyed. That’s one of the reasons the Boycott,
Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel is losing steam.
More musicians are refusing to give in to pressure to cancel their
concerts in Israel. Among musicians who have toured Israel recently or
have upcoming tours are Radiohead, Bon Jovi, Elton John, Neil Young,
Bryan Adams, Nick Cave, Lorde and the Cuban band Pasión de Buena Vista,
formed in tribute to the internationally known Buena Vista Social Club,
which performed in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa in December.
In July Nasreen Qadri, an Israeli-Arab musician, wrote in Newsweek that
politically pressured cancellations are “hurting those who wish to
promote peace and tolerance in a troubled region.”
“I was born in Haifa and grew up in Lod — two cities with a mix of Arab
and Jewish communities, living side by side. It wasn’t always easy, but
my personal experience has taught me that open dialog is the only way to
overcome our differences,” she wrote. “Those who call for boycott are
only trying to divide us.”
A Dec. 8 editorial in the Jerusalem Post criticized a law passed in the
Knesset in March that bans entry to Israel of foreigners who publicly
back the boycott. “People should not be penalized for their political
views. Truth is the best remedy,” the editors said.
Related articles:
Migrant workers in Beijing mobilize to protest evictions
Quebec: Frame-up case against rail workers unravels
On the Picket Line
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