High Court petitioned for names of fat-cat wage earners

Petition concerns public sector employees who have been paid "excessive wages".

By DAN IZENBERG
high court of justice 88 (photo credit: )
high court of justice 88
(photo credit: )
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel on Monday petitioned the High Court of Justice to order the Supervisor of Wages and Labor Agreements to publish the names of public sector employees who have been paid "excessive wages." According to the petition, filed by attorneys Eliad Shraga, Barak Calev and Daniel Kirs, the supervisor is obligated to present an annual report to the Knesset that includes all incidences of excessive wages paid to the employees of hundreds of public institutions, including public companies, local authorities, and government and municipal companies. The definition of an excessive wage is given in the law. According to the petitioners, many public officials are authorized to fight such excesses. They can compel employees in question to return some of the money, fire them, or freeze government funding to the institutions paying them. The trouble has been, the petitioners wrote, that the supervisor does not name names in his reports. "Those who receive excess wages are described in laconic and general terms such as 'department head'... and the excessive wages that appear in one year do not appear in the following years. It is impossible to conduct a follow-up on these reports without the names," they wrote. The petitioners said that without knowing the identity of the wage earners, it is impossible to know whether sanctions were applied or whether the officials continued to receive more money than they should. The law allows the supervisor to publish the employees' names and the public has the right to know who these people are, the petitioners said. Making the matter transparent would also deter employers from paying such wages and employees from accepting them, they said.