Human Rights and Peace Groups >>>>>>>>>Submit/Update an organization >>>>>>>> Today's Situation

17 Peretz St.
Tel Aviv, Israel
Tel: 03-6883766
Fax: 03-6883537
email@kavlaoved.org.il
www.kavlaoved.org.il
Director: Hanna Zohar

Kav La'Oved was established in 1990 to defend the rights of workers, particularly Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip employed in Israel. The organization was established with several aims in mind: to help workers obtain their basic labor rights in Israel (minimum wage, social benefits, severance pay, compensation for work accidents); to act as an advocate for Palestinian workers vis-a-vis government ministries and the Civil Administration; to inform the press, the public, and the international community about the situation of Palestinian workers in Israel; and to lobby for just and equal treatment of Palestinian workers in the Knesset and in Israeli courts.

Kav La'Oved provides legal aid for Palestinian workers - collecting their labor complaints, negotiating with their employers, preparing lawsuits, and representing the workers in Israeli labor courts.

Kav La'Oved publishes and distributes short workers' rights pamphlets in Arabic and several other languages as well as periodic newsletters in Hebrew and English which provide updates of the situation of Palestinian workers in Israel as well as vital information about legal, administrative, and political issues affecting these and other workers.

Kav La'Oved initiated a lawsuit in the Jerusalem District Court in January 1994 calling on the government of Israel to provide equal national insurance benefits to Palestinian workers in Israel, or alternately to refund the national insurance deductions taken from these workers' wages since 1970 for benefits they never received. The December 1994 Knesset legislation implementing the Gaza-Jericho Agreement (of May 1994) retroactively legalised these national insurance (now called equalisation levy) deductions and as a result the District Court dismissed the lawsuit in May 1995. An appeal of the case is now being heard in Israel's Supreme Court.

In 1995, for the first time, a district labor court ruled that a worker from Gaza whose employer did not reemploy him after a closure was to be regarded as dismissed from his work and was eligible to full severance pay. Unfortunately, the National Labor Court failed to uphold the district court ruling and issued a compromise settlement. In most cases of closure-related severance pay Kav La'Oved succeeds in obtaining a compromise settlement of 40-50 % of the full amount.

In 1995, an unprecedented 43,000 Palestinian workers without permits were arrested in Israel. Workers who were caught more than twice, or who had security or criminal records, were indicted and sentenced to prison terms of up to one year (the maximum sentence for illegal entry). In its newsletter, Kav La'Oved raised the issue of these mass arrests, noting that the government's policy of closures and quotas was turning thousands of Palestinians who had traditionally worked in Israel, and who had no choice but to continue to enter Israel without permits in order to work and feed their families, into criminals serving prison time. Kav La'Oved views this phenomenon as a serious economic and human rights issue. And in 1995-1996, Kav La'Oved also devoted a significant amount of time to defending the rights of foreign workers in Israel.