When Histadrut Labor Federation Chairman Arnon Bar-David woke up Sunday morning and looked in the mirror, he apparently thought that he saw not himself – a man whom most Israelis could pass on the street without recognizing – but rather iconic Histadrut leader Yitzhak Ben-Aharon.
Bar-David also apparently got the date confused as well, thinking it was September 1, 1972, not September 1, 2024.
Because in 1972, when Ben-Aharon led the Histadrut, the massive labor union was still in its Golden Age.
At that time, the Histadrut was not just a labor union, but a major economic and political force in the country.
It controlled a large portion of the Israeli economy, was the second-largest employer after the government, owned numerous businesses and industries, including the massive construction company Solel Boneh, the Zim shipping line, and Bank Hapoalim, and controlled health funds (Clalit) and even an English-language newspaper (The Jerusalem Post).
Union membership was vast, reaching 1.6 million members in 1983, one-third of the population at the time, and about 85% of all wage earners in the land.
During this Golden Age, the Histadrut was closely aligned with the ruling Labor Party, creating a powerful government-labor alliance. Its ability to call nationwide strikes gave it enormous leverage.
Bar-David’s attempt to pressure government
When Ben-Aharon called a strike, it effectively paralyzed the country. Even the threat of a strike in his day and in the days of his powerful successor, Yeruham Meshel, was often enough to win government concessions.
By calling a general strike on Monday, Bar-David was trying to channel his inner Ben-Aharon and Meshel. But there were a few problems.
First, he does not have their influence or public stature.
Second, the Histadrut, with 800,000 workers, is only a shadow of its previous self. And third, it was uncommon – if not unheard of – for Ben-Aharon or Meshel to call a strike over political rather than economic or labor issues.
On Sunday, in declaring a strike to put pressure on the government to agree to a hostage deal – the details of which the public is unaware and which no one knows for sure whether Hamas will even agree to – Bar-David, as the Hebrew saying goes, kafatz m’al hapupek (jumped above his navel), or, in more idiomatic English, overreached.
Yes, a Histadrut call for a general strike can cause a great deal of inconvenience. It can leave travelers without departing flights at Ben-Gurion Airport. It can disrupt train traffic. It can give parents additional headaches by closing down preschools. But the Histadrut does not have the ability anymore to completely paralyze the nation. Those days have passed.
The power of the Histadrut began to wane in the 1980s and 1990s when Labor lost its iron grip on the country’s politics; when economic liberalization policies reduced state involvement in the economy; when Histadrut-owned industries were privatized; and when the National Health Insurance Law went into effect in 1995, severing Clalit from the Histadrut and meaning that one no longer needed to be a member of the union to access the healthcare Clalit provided.
Bar-David’s first overreach was thinking that he could bring the country to a standstill with this strike. He can’t. He declared a strike, but many municipalities, including not insignificant ones like Jerusalem and Ashdod, did not honor it, with schools and municipal offices remaining open.
The second major overreach was declaring a strike over a political issue. In this country, political strikes are unlawful, though strikes with “mixed purposes,” both political and economic, skirt a fine line and may be lawful in some cases.
Bar-David was aware of this when he declared the strike, so he was careful in the rationale he gave.
“It is no longer possible to stand by as Jews are murdered in the tunnels in Gaza,” he said Sunday at a press conference, announcing the strike.
“It is unacceptable. We need to arrive at a [hostage] deal; a deal is more important than anything else. I came to this conclusion after talking with many people in politics and many senior officers in the security establishment. The deal is not progressing because of political considerations, and that is not acceptable. I decided we must stop abandoning the hostages and the evacuees [in the North]. And the economy is collapsing. We must stop the divisions and return Israel to some sort of rational normalcy.”
In that statement, Bar-David incorporated concern about the country’s economy with what sounded clearly like a political motivation for the strike, hoping – apparently – that he could get in under the bar and that the courts would not disavow the strike because an economic purpose was included: the “collapsing of the economy” as a result of the war.
But this effort to couch the strike in economic terms didn’t work, and the Labor Court in Bat Yam ordered the Histadrut to end it, saying it was political and that “there is no connection between the killing of the abductees and the economy.”
Histadrut spokesman Yaniv Levi said in an Army Radio interview that Bar-David took this action not because of consultations with opposition politicians but rather to “shake up” the economy because he wanted to show solidarity with the hostage families, put the issue on top of the public’s agenda and urge the Prime Minister not to abandon the hostages.
Bar-David may have been influenced by a decision he made in March 2023 when he called for a strike following Benjamin Netanyahu’s firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, at the height of the judicial reform unrest. Hours after the strike was called, Netanyahu revoked that resignation, and this may have gone to Bar-David’s head, leading him to imagine that he – and the Histadrut – have the power that they once had.
But they don’t. On Monday, this became apparent for all to see. Sometimes, to paraphrase an old saying – it’s wiser to remain quiet and let others assume you have tremendous strength, than to act and expose your limitations.