The entire public sector will strike in protest over the firing of hundreds of Israel Broadcasting Authority employees.
By GIL HOFFMANUpdated: APRIL 19, 2017 01:20Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Histadrut chairman Avi Nissenkorn(photo credit: HAIM ZACH/GPO)
The entire public sector will go on strike next Tuesday to protest the firing of hundreds of Israel Broadcasting Authority workers, Histadrut labor federation chief Avi Nissenkorn announced Tuesday.Nissenkorn said he hopes a fair solution will be found, but if not, a full strike is the only option to help the workers.“Over the last several weeks, a cynical and painful game has been played on the backs of the workers,” Nissenkorn said.“Let’s put an end to this painful ordeal.”Critics of Nissenkorn accused him of timing the strike to help him in his May 23 race to remain chairman of the Histadrut.His opponent in the race, Zionist Union MK Shelly Yacimovich, said Nissenkorn only cares about himself and not about the workers.“New records in cynicism are being broken,” Yacimovich said. “After three years of Nissenkorn abandoning the IBA workers, no one believes they really matter to him.”Yacimovich said the strike is especially hypocritical because Nissenkorn had made a political deal with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon.Nissenkorn’s campaign responded to Yacimovich by saying that with every statement she puts out, she gets more pathetic, and that the Histadrut workers would not let her get elected and destroy all of his achievements.Former communications minister Gilad Erdan, who initiated a plan for public broadcasting that was overturned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, responded for the first time Tuesday to the framework advanced by the premier in the role he held as communications minister after Erdan.“I think my framework is better, but a new communications minister has the right to pass a different framework if he can pass it in the Knesset,” he told Army Radio.
