NEW DELHI: Trade unions in India are raising the alarm over a lack of legal protection and rights guarantees for their countrymen working in Israel.
Israel has started a recruitment drive in India as it looks to replace with manpower from South Asia the tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers who have had their work permits revoked since the start of Israel’s attacks on Gaza in October.
In November, the Indian Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship signed a three-year agreement with Tel Aviv regarding the “temporary employment” of workers in the construction and caregiving sectors.
Authorities in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana have published advertisements offering jobs for 10,000 carpenters, ironworkers, and floor fitters. The advertised salaries were in the range of $1,680 — four times what the workers could earn at home.
With concerns growing, the Ministry of External Affairs said in mid-January that labor laws in Israel provide for the protection of migrant rights and labor rights and that it is “committed to safe and legal mobility and migration of our people.”
Unionists, however, say that the workers in Israel have no clarity about who is responsible for their social security and safety in a war zone. They also say that Israel’s treatment of Palestinian laborers casts doubt on how the newly recruited workers will be treated.
“They have driven out the Palestinian workers and they want to recruit Indian workers in their place, the Indian workers are being made into sacrificial goats,” K. Hemalata, president of the Construction Workers Federation of India, told . “The labor ministry is not taking responsibility, the state government is not taking responsibility, the National Skill Development Corporation is not taking responsibility, the Ministry of External Affairs is not taking responsibility.”
Representing some 100 million workers, Indian trade unions have been opposing the mass employment of Indians in Israel since the moment it became public. In early November, they issued a statement saying that Israel’s occupation of Palestine had decimated its economy, making Palestinians dependent on Israel for employment, and that providing the country with manpower would “amount to complicity on India’s part with Israel’s ongoing genocidal war against Palestinians.”
Since the Indian government has proceeded with the plan, the unions are preparing to take action against it.
Teams from Israel were conducting job interviews in Rohtak — a city in Haryana — in late January. Thousands of candidates arrived not only from across the state but also from as far afield as Bihar, more than 1,000 km away.
Those who came were desperate for work. Mostly young, they see no prospect of employment in India, where the unemployment rate for those aged 20 to 34 is higher than 20 percent.
