Global unions allege wages withheld from Palestinian workers in Israel

Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Israel has withheld the pay and benefits of more than 200,000 Gaza and West Bank Palestinians who work in Israel since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel in a "blatant" violation of international labor law, unions alleged Friday.

The workers employed in Israel, formally and informally, have not received wages amounting to tens of millions of dollars for work prior to Oct. 7 and have received no pay since, plunging many families into destitution, nine global unions said in a joint complaint to recover the outstanding pay.

The complaint accuses the Israeli government of "blatant" breaches of the International Labor Organization's protection of wages convention by holding back the September pay of 13,000 workers whose work permits were revoked on Oct. 10, the first working day after the attacks in which Hamas killed 1,200 people in southern Israel.

The brief argues that almost 200,000 other Palestinian workers blocked from re-entering Israel from the West Bank are owed back pay and wages for subsequent months under the terms of their employment contracts due to failure to give them formal notice they were being let go.

"These workers have experienced widespread wage theft due to the suspension of work permits and the unilateral termination of their contracts," the complaint said, noting that Palestinian workers had been battling to recover outstanding wages or settle wage debts for almost a year.

The average daily wage for Palestinian workers employed in Israel under regular work permits was $79 and $567-$702 per week for those working in the informal economy.

"When I visited the West Bank earlier this year, I witnessed the economic destitution experienced by the families of Palestinian workers employed in Israel. As always, working people are enduring the worst of the continuing conflict," said International Trade Union Confederation General Secretary Luc Triangle.

Public Services International union General Secretary Daniel Bertossa said the withholding of wages was the latest "unjustified indignity faced by Palestinian workers under occupation," calling it disproportionate.

"This is a collective punishment of the Palestinian people," he said.

Independent Israeli unions backed the complaint.

"Two hundred thousand workers in the West Bank lost their jobs," Maan Workers Association executive director Assaf Adiv, told The Guardian .

"They did not receive any compensation and have been suffering ever since from extreme poverty.

"Thousands of workers who risk entering Israel without permits face repression, humiliation and even death. Workers are a major social layer in Palestinian society that is peaceful and doesn't associate with Hamas and thus should not be punished," said Adiv.

Palestinian unemployment has risen to its highest-ever level since the outbreak of the war in Gaza with the loss to the economies of the West Bank and Gaza estimated to be as much as $19 million per day, according to an ILO report published in May on the situation of workers in the occupied Arab territories.