Kav LaOved's Att. Eran Golan asked the court today (Feb. 8, 2007) to join the request to turn the lawsuit of security guard Ishta Chesla (represented by Atts. Gal and Ram Gorodisky) against the security and cleaning services company B.S. Avidar LTD into a class lawsuit (Case no. 3847/05). 

Chesla, who worked as a security guard, but never received any pension allocations, petitioned the Tel Aviv Regional Labor Court to turn his personal lawsuit into a class lawsuit. Payment of pension allocations is mandated under collective bargaining agreements applicable to the entire security sector. Kav LaOved claims that there is an inherent difficulty in the Israeli security market that weakens workers and prevents them from demanding their rights in real time and obtaining what they legally deserve. 

Kav LaOved has been protecting the rights of the most disadvantaged workers in Israel over the last 15 years. Its stance is that in light of the fact that disadvantaged workers find it difficult to defend their rights due to economical power gaps, lack of knowledge, lack of trade union representation, and lack of enforcement of labor laws in Israel, a class lawsuit is the proper means to defend the rights of disadvantaged workers in Israel. 

Kav LaOved further claims that labor courts already noted that in sectors where subcontractors operate, such as security and cleaning, suffer fierce competition which induces "a race to the bottom". This competition causes a high rate of replacement of contractors by service commissioners and of work places by workers, and provides an economic incentive to abuse worker rights. In this sad race to the bottom there is great importance to allowing class lawsuits.
Att. Gorodisky said that the joining Kav LaOved is especially important in light of the data collected at Kav LaOved in recent years, which indicate systemic violations of worker rights in the security and cleaning sectors, especially in the context of pension allocations.