The right to social security is one of the most important statutory rights in the 21st century welfare state. The main source of the retired citizen's economic security is their pension, which they are supposed to receive at a certain age.

Until 2008, approximately one million workers did not have any legal standing when demanding that their employers pay for their pensions. The recent deal signed between the Histadrut and employers does indeed grant workers social benefits, but the legal background and the current judicial system in Israel do not provide practical solutions to those whose rights have been violated.

Criminal law is avoided: Today, both the employer's and the employee's money allocated to social benefits is transferred to the pension fund through the employer. In practice, many employers tend to make these payments late, and not always in full. The common worker, who sees that the money has been deducted from their salary every month, assumes that they can sleep easy. In fact their situation is not very different from that of a contract worker. Legislation has been severe and the penalty for failing to transfer money deducted from a salary has been set at five years prison time. To date, not one offender has been indicted for this crime.

Civilian means of enforcement have been rejected: There is no governmental body dedicated to the enforcement of pension payments. In the absence of such a body, the only way to enforce this law for the benefit of the workers is through a class action. Labour courts have not been acting in the spirit of the new Class Action Law, and have rejected all class action suits regarding pension fund payments.

Labour Court proceedings take too much time: Today, in the Local Labour Court in Tel-Aviv, the first hearing in a claim is conducted one year after it is filed. When Income Tax ordinances stating that money cannot be deposited after one year are added to the equation, we see that a worker who is forced to sue their employer will never receive payment to their pension fund.

Compensation does not reflect the damage: Even after the Labour Court accepts that the worker's right to pension has been violated, the compensation it awards does not reflect the damage to the worker. Usually, loss of return during the years payments were not made to the pension fund is not accounted for in damages.

Statute of limitations is also problematic. Let us take, for example, a person who has worked 40 years and whose employer has avoided payments to his pension fund. This worker reaches retirement and discovers that he was entitled to a pension fund. Allegedly, this worker could sue his employer because the employer had not paid for his social benefits. However, a National Labour Court ruling states that the statute of limitations is to be calculated for each due pension payment individually, instead of calculating it from the time of retirement for the entire pension. Consequentially, the worker can only sue for seven years worth of payments out of a total of 40 years of labour, and will be left with no pension.

In conclusion, we have a legal system where proceedings take too long and which does not fully compensate the worker, inflexible Income Tax ordinances, and a legal system which acts according to normative concepts, preferring not to use criminal sanctions, contrary to the legislature's position. For the workers at the bottom of the labour market the way to realization of the right to social security looks harder than ever.