Ten global unions have filed a complaint urging Israel to pay back wages for more than 200,000 Palestinian workers who have gone unpaid or seen their benefits withheld in the year since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.
Within hours of the onslaught last year, the Israeli government announced the suspension of work permits for almost all Palestinians who had been commuting daily to work inside Israel, citing security concerns.
The complaint, lodged at the International Labour Organization (ILO) on Friday, cited “millions of dollars of lost income, causing severe financial insecurity… and widespread hardship for the affected workers and their families, who have no access to judicial remedies.”
Israel has ratified the ILO convention on the protection of unpaid wages, which is legally binding on signatories.
According to the complaint, 13,000 workers from the Gaza Strip have not been paid for work done before October 7, 2023. In addition, some 150,000 Palestinian workers from the West Bank have not been allowed to enter Israel since the attack nearly one year ago, and have not been paid for work done before the war broke out.
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It was not immediately clear whether the complaint was merely demanding the delivery of wages owed for work already done before October 7, or whether it was also demanding further compensation based on the abrupt termination of work in the wake of the attack.
Israel has withheld a total of around NIS 6 billion ($1.61 billion) in tax revenues to the PA, according to an estimate by the Palestinian finance ministry, which is today too cash-strapped to pay public workers’ salaries in full.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has justified withholding the funds by saying that the Palestinian Authority incentivizes terrorism by disbursing stipends to security prisoners and the families of slain terrorists.
The ILO estimates average daily wages for Palestinians employed in Israel under regular work permits at $79 a day, while for informal workers, weekly pay ranged from $565 to $700.
“These workers have experienced widespread wage theft due to the suspension of work permits and the unilateral termination of their contracts,” the unions said.
They include the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) and the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI).
Under ILO rules, the body can set up a so-called tripartite committee composed of government and employers’ and workers’ groups to examine alleged violations of the convention. This could eventually lead to an investigation and even sanctions, as occurred in Myanmar in the 1990s.
Times of Israel staff and Gianluca Pacchiani contributed to this report.
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