Strike Attacks Israel Drive on Inflation : Government Offices, Factories and Banks Shut Down in Protest

Factories, banks, government offices and businesses shut down today as Israel’s 1.5-million-member Histadrut trade union federation staged a one-day strike to protest the government’s new economic austerity program.

Israel Radio and Israel Television stopped all their broadcasts except for news, although Israel Army Radio continued normal programming.

Only public transport continued more or less normally, while emergency services such as hospitals worked on holiday staffing.

The government issued back-to-work orders to several groups of workers in essential services, including 300 staffers at Ben-Gurion Airport, to ensure that international flights would continue.

Air Staff Reports

A control tower staffer at the airport said that the staff who received the back-to-work orders had reported for duty, but he declined to say whether they were actually working.

Thousands of Israelis held violent demonstrations against the austerity measures in a Jerusalem slum neighborhood overnight, burning tires and waving signs with vulgar slogans condemning Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

Israel Radio said four border policemen were injured during the demonstrations, and 15 of the demonstrators were arrested.

The general strike was ordered in reaction to the government’s unilateral decision on Monday to suspend all collective wage agreements and freeze wages and prices as part of its new policy to counter inflation. (Story on Page 8.)

Inflation Cut to 300%

Inflation reached 445% last year, and the last seven months of price and wage restraints have succeeded only in slowing it to an estimated 300%.

Histadrut claimed that the government decision to suspend the automatic cost-of-living increases was illegal. But constitutional law experts said the government was acting within its legal powers when it used the country’s emergency regulations to order the austerity plan without Parliament’s approval.

Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai presented the measures to Parliament after they were already in force, and the program was approved today by a vote of 70 to 19, with three abstentions.

Modai said the government considered the balloting a vote of confidence.