When looking at the pay slips presented by the workers who require Kav LaOved’s assistance, a variety of fraud methods is revealed. In some cases the methods are subtly disguised, and sometimes they are completely blunt.

One common method used by employers in order to deceive migrant workers, who don’t read Hebrew, is adding a section - a little word in the pay slip – namely, "advance payment". Those are actually two phrases with the same meaning: the deduction of money from the worker’s wages, allegedly received from the employer earlier. Kav LaOved’s representatives often encounter pay slips of asylum seekers in which “advance payments” are deducted, while, according to the workers, advance payments had never been made.

If the workers turn to their employers wondering why their salary does not match the number of work hours for that month, they are told that the tax rate in Israel is higher. If only they could read those pay slips, they would know that their employers are violating the law and deducting amounts from their wages in an illegal manner.

Amendment 24 to the Wage Protection Law states that every employer must grant workers pay slips in which are listed, among other things, the worker’s work hours, hourly rate and social benefits. The pay slip must be accompanied by an attendance card and details on the payment method. If the pay slip is not detailed enough, or the employer does not provide a pay slip, the employer is expected to pay a fine of approximately 5000 shekels for each faulty pay slip.

Under the amendment, the burden of proof that the employer indeed made an advance payment is imposed on the employer. An employer, who does not show such evidence, performs a criminal offense punishable by a fine. The offense does not end with that. The false deductions of the "advance payments" are also tax offenses, since the employee pays retroactive taxes for the amounts he allegedly received.

A group of workers from Sudan approached our offices after being fired from their work place without any prior notice, any severance pay, or payments for their social benefits. After reviewing the workers’ pay slips, they were surprised to hear that in January 2009, no less than a thousand shekels were deducted from their wages for advance payments, and that for some of them, more was deducted in February 2009. The money, they claim, had never been given to them before.
Arabic is the second official language in Israel, but Arabic speaking migrant workers employed in Israel, as well as Palestinian workers employed in Israel, do not receive pay slips in their own language. This allows, of course, as the examples above show, violating their rights without anyone giving it the attention it deserves.