One of the most difficult phenomena which strike migrant workers arriving in Israel is the high brokerage fees they are forced to pay to middlemen who recruitment them for work in Israel. The Ministry of Industry Trade and Labour initiated an agreement to bring migrant workers to Israel through the International Organisation of Migration (IOM). The idea was to replace private job brokers in countries of origin by the IOM and hopefully to dramatically reduce the brokerage fees charged by middlemen. Kav LaOved supports, in principle, this initiative. 

But even though the Foreign Office mentioned a 'pilot' where 2,000 migrant workers would be recruited in Thailand through the IOM, nothing was done until the announced deadline of January 1, 2006, and migrants continue to pay thousands of dollars to get a job in Israel. 

Kav LaOved petitioned the Supreme Court against the refusal of the Foreign Office to sign a triangular agreement with the IOM and countries of origin to arrange the recruitment of migrant workers to Israel, and against the failure to execute government decision no.4024, which orders to "determine an arrangement of recruiting migrant workers under supervision of the IOM or another form of supervision".

In its response to the Court the State asked to reject the petition. Nevertheless, the state did not dispute the need to fight against the phenomenon of charging commission fees of the workers and declared that it was considering communicating by bilateral agreements with some countries of origin in order to strengthen the control over the recruitment phase and the cooperation between countries (either with the assistance of the IOM or otherwise).

Supreme Court petition 2405/06

Update: An agreement was signed between the Thai government and the IOM to oversee the recruitment of Thai workers for work in Israel. Israel is not a party to the agreement. An Israeli government decision from August 2007 determines that as of June 1, 2008, workers will not be brought from countries that do not have bilateral agreements with Israel. The court case is still in progress.