Histadrut To Striking Hadassah MDs: It Was OUR Turn To Go On Strike

Jerusalem, February 12 – The tension surrounding the Hadassah Hospital debt crisis increased today when the country largest labor union accused striking hospital personnel of picketing out of turn when it was supposed to be the union’s turn to disrupt Israelis’ lives.

The Histadrut, which represents government and public sector workers, criticized hospital staff across the country for shutting down all non-emergency-related services for several hours Monday and Tuesday, in solidarity with their colleagues at Hadassah. According to the union, this week was supposed to see a strike by trash collectors and airport baggage handlers, not a medical workers’ strike.

The two Hadassah facilities in Jerusalem will remain on strike at least through Wednesday, with nurses and technicians joining the doctors in the protest and all but shutting down all nonessential and non-oncological services. The hospital personnel are protesting cuts in their wages that they foresee as part of a reorganization to restructure and repay the hospital’s 1.7 billion shekel debt.

Representatives of the physicians’ association and the Histadrut traded barbs at a meeting Tuesday evening, and accused each other of small-mindedness and petty politics. “The Histadrut had specifically reserved the week of February 9-15 for a massive strike of public sector workers,” said Ofer Eini, the union’s director. “Pre-empting that arrangement by Hadassah personnel compromises out ability to disrupt the lives of eight million people. We suspect it was a deliberate jab that reeks of class warfare,” he added, referring to the predominantly Mizrahi, or Middle-Eastern, makeup of the Histadrut vs. the image of doctors as primarily of Ashekenazi, or European, origins.

“Nothing stops the Histadrut from declaring a strike this moment,” retorted Dr. Gil Tripp. “Claiming there’s only a finite amount of disruption that can be wrought on Israeli society is ridiculous. We suspect rather that the Histadrut is jealous of the attention we have garnered, considering how powerless they feel under the current conservative government.”

According to Eini, the schedule of strikes for 2014 was to include the traditional start-of-the-school-year teacher strike in September, plus a Ben Gurion Airport baggage-handler strike at the peak of the holiday tourist season, with trash collection strikes in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Rechovot, Eilat, Haifa, Beersheva, Beit Shemesh, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Bat Yam, Nahariya, Tiberias, and Afula at the peak of the summer heat. Doctors were not scheduled to strike again until spring of 2015, when the public had grown complacent about such a thing.

“We’re not sure what to do now,” said Teachers’ Union representative Constance Braubeater. “We might have to actually start teaching right at the beginning of next academic year, and we probably can’t handle that.”