Palestinian workers employed by “Eitan & Yinon Agriculture Ltd” at Moshav Na’ama in the Jordan Valley sued their employer for failure to provide severance pay, advance notice, and vacation, holiday, and recuperation pay. What makes this case unique is that it’s rare for Palestinian women employed by Israelis in the Occupied Territories to sue their employer.

Thousands of Palestinian workers who are employed in the Jordan Valley are denied their due wages despite the fact that the Israeli Labor laws applies to them. Many Palestinian workers are not getting their wages on time and are not getting their social benefits due to lack of enforcement by the authorities.

Following a series of meetings with representatives of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions in Jericho, narrated by Kav LaOved’s Salwa Alinat, the workers, six of them, sued their employer through Kav LaOved and attorney Hashem Masrawa.

The six workers claimed in their complaint that their employer, “Eitan & Yinon Agriculture Ltd”, was responsible for paying their social benefits and severance pay since the company hired them and fired them. The defendants admitted that the women were employed in agricultural work, but claimed that they were employed through a labor contractor whom they contacted and who was responsible for recruiting the women and transporting them to work and back. The labor contractor, Jihad Abdel Karim, paid the women’s wages out of a sum of money he received from the company, and was completely responsible for handling the worker’s employment.

In a partial court decision given on May 24, 2010, Judge Daniel Goldberg determined that the defendants’ claim that they did not supervise the workers and that only the labor contractor was able to fire them was unacceptable. The court stated that the defendants, in their own testimony, confirmed that they decided to fire the workers, which proves that they had a responsibility as an employer when it came to the plaintiffs.

The court determined that the labor contractor and the company share responsibility for these workers. Deliberations on this case are continuing. 

Translated by: Avi Vardi