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IN-DEPTH FEATURES
Over the last few years many people have been fired from
their jobs, mainly in the public service sector, due to
their refusal to work on Shabbos. The workers were not
always able to win their case, and in many instances were
forced to leave their jobs ? The Haifa district labor court
recently issued heavy fines to a restaurant chain for
employing workers on Shabbos in violation of the Work and
Rest Hours law ? Although the general courts are not
enforcing the Work and Rest Hours law, and allow businesses
time and time again to keep their establishments open on
Shabbos, the labor courts, interestingly enough are adopting
the stand of the workers.
An unprecedented ruling was issued lately by the Israeli
Labor Court which determined that it is forbidden to
discriminate against a person for religious reasons
according to the Law of Equal Employment Opportunity. This
ruling has not received wide publicity despite dozens of
similar cases.
Efraim Oved, a frum engineer appealed to the Labor
Court after losing a job offer at a high-tech firm due to
his refusal to work on Shabbos. Judge Ilan Sofer ruled that
the obligation of employers not to discriminate between job
applicants means that they must set the conditions of
acceptance that do not take into account the applicants'
religion or beliefs.
According to news reports, Efraim Oved was laid off from his
old job two years ago due to cutbacks, after having worked
there for two years. When he applied to work for Intel in
Kiryat Gat, they asked him whether he would be willing to
work on Shabbos. Oved replied that he was shomer
Shabbos. After a written exam and an interview, both of
which he passed successfully, Oved was informed that he did
not get the job.
Ha'aretz reported that Oved was similarly rejected by
other firms, including Lan Research, for his unwillingness
to work on Shabbos. The company ignored his plea to
reconsider his application despite his claim that this was a
violation of the law as most of the companies he had applied
to were not authorized to work on Shabbos anyway.
Efraim Oved sued the company for NIS 30,000. Judge Sofer
ruled in favor of Oved saying that the law had established
Shabbos as the Jewish day of rest, and therefore, this
should not act as an obstacle to any Jew, whether secular
and religious, when applying for a job.
This is not the first time an observant Jew was
discriminated against due to refusal to work on Shabbos.
This is a serious problem that has as yet not been solved in
an orderly manner through normal legal channels. As a rule,
with civil servants in the defense or internal security
areas, the state pleads pikuach nefesh when
advocating work on Shabbos. In the private sector, however,
any business or factory owner can do as he pleases.
The Precedents were not Favorable
The courts have dealt with this problem many times in the
past, and not always does the religious employee come out
ahead. Meir Zorei'a worked for the Jerusalem police force
until four and a half years ago. When on duty during Shabbos
shifts, Zorei'a was forced to record complaints in writing,
even when the circumstances were not an emergency or
pikuach nefesh, such as thefts or car damages. In his
appeal to the High Court, Zorei'a's lawyer, Naftali
Wertzberger, contended that Zorei'a was forced to violate
the Shabbos unnecessarily.
When Zorei'a began working for the police force seven years
ago, his job was fraud investigator for the Jerusalem
district. In the course of his job he came up against
various problems when working the Shabbos shift. Among
others was the fact that he had to write up reports that
were not urgent.
Zorei'a spoke to then Jerusalem district police rabbi, Rav
Moshe Turetsky, asking what he should do and was told that
there was no hetter to write on Shabbos. He then took
his complaint to then deputy commander of the Jerusalem
district, Miki Levy. Levy outlined the options open to him:
either change his job within the department to traffic cop,
patrolman, sentry, or jail warden, or keep his present job
of investigator and continue violating the Shabbos, or
quit.
Zorei'a appealed to the High Court, arguing that changing to
one of the lesser jobs as Levy had suggested amounted to
nothing less than being penalized for his faith, not to
mention that it forever foreclosed his advancement within
the department. The High Court issued a conditional order
obligating the police department to reply, within 21 days,
with the reasons it had for not keeping its operations on
Shabbos and festivals within the parameters of halochoh.
The police department presented its answer to the High Court
a full year after the conditional order was issued. The
police representatives asked then police department rabbi,
Rav Shlomo Neiman, for a halachic opinion on the matter. Rav
Neiman, in a statement which went against the position of
the police and supported Zorei'a's case, wrote that the
party deciding the nature of Shabbos operations should be
the police rabbi and not headquarters. As for Zorei'a, he
should not be compelled to violate the Shabbos.
The police cunningly hid this information from the High
Court judges, and instead of Rav Neiman's opinion they
brought that of the rabbi of the Jerusalem district police
who, they claimed, had a different view of the matter. As it
turned out, the police representatives based their case on a
past conversation with the district rabbi which was not
representative; they had not asked Rav Turetsky to prepare a
formal opinion. As a result, the High Court was misguided in
the fundamental issue of chilul Shabbos of police
officers.
The police legal counsel brought the view of Jerusalem
district rabbi, presenting it as follows to the Court: "The
police rabbi made known to the appellant that as rabbi he is
not in the position to decide which work is necessary for
security or operational considerations, and therefore this
is up to the discretion of the commanders." They went on to
say that Zorei'a had already been told verbally by the rabbi
that he was not in the position to determine what
constitutes security work.
This, not surprisingly, resulted in the High Court's ruling
unequivocally in favor of the police, based on Rav
Turetsky's oral "opinion" which was presented as that of the
entire police department rabbinate. The High Court was faced
with an issue of fundamental human rights and equal
employment opportunity, and as a result of the
misrepresentation on the part of the police department the
judges ruled unequivocally in their favor, since the police
rabbi said that he was unable to determine what constituted
security work.
The issue was brought up for discussion in the Knesset,
after being publicized in Yated Ne'eman. Chareidi MPs
argued bitterly with then- Minister of Interior Security
Avigdor Kahalani, but in the end Zorei'a left his job and
the matter was dropped.
In the Israeli Prison Guard System
A similar story occurred with Sergeant (res.) Yonah Cohen.
About seven years ago Cohen became a ba'al teshuva.
He had served eight years in the police force until then,
and served four more until he left three years ago. He had a
spotless record, that is, until he became frum and
asked his superiors to be exempt from the Shabbos shift in
the Kishon prison where he worked.
Ever since then the attitude toward him changed from one
extreme to the other. His request was immediately denied,
even though out of 100 police officers at the prison, only
two were religious which means that the service rotation
could easily have been arranged to free Cohen on Shabbos.
Cohen turned overnight from the "golden boy" to the
"whipping boy." He was the victim of a series of schemes
meant to incriminate him to the point where he was accused
of smuggling things in to the prisoners. Cohen was tried in
court and completely acquitted. He was tested using a lie
detector, and this too, showed to his irrefutable innocence.
Nevertheless, he was a marked man, and his commanders tried
every way to get rid of him and have him moved elsewhere.
A few years ago he was transferred to the police station in
Tiveria and from there to the police station in Natzrat. His
request not to work on Shabbos was honored and he was given
a job in the Afula area as the person in charge of security
patrol of educational institutions, which obviously are open
only on weekdays. But later, when Cohen was transferred back
to Natzrat he was again forced to work Shabbos shifts. His
petition not to work Shabbos was turned down and his
commander wrote in his file: "The officer does not work
Friday night or Shabbos since he is a chozer
beteshuva and therefore he is not suited for his
job."
After refusing to work on Shabbos, and as a result of
infighting between local and regional police commanders
regarding his case, Yonah Cohen was dismissed from his job
without the right to appeal. Cohen's father, who is not a
religious man but respects Jewish tradition, said at the
time to Yated Ne'eman that his son was harassed
because he had become frum. "It is hard for me to say
it, but as a person who went through the Holocaust and the
war, this brings me back to those days, when we were
persecuted for being Jews," he said.
Forcing people to work on Shabbos is not new to the State.
At one time traditional Jews from Georgia, Russia, who
worked as porters at the airport, had to work on Shabbos,
otherwise they would lose their jobs. A great hue and cry
ensued until it was stopped.
That was about 25 years ago; today there are no more porters
at the airport and therefore this problem no longer exists,
but there are still factories and other workplaces that
accept employees on the basis of their willingness to work
on Shabbos. All over the world, including the United States,
this discriminatory practice has been abolished, and yet
here in Eretz Yisroel it continues until today.
Aside from the law that mandates equal employment
opportunity, there is also the Work and Rest Hours Law which
says that Jewish workers must not work on Shabbos.
On the one hand many businesses that are open on Shabbos
require their employees to work all week. On the other hand,
those who are not willing to work on Shabbos often have a
hard time finding a job.
A few months ago the senior judge at the district Labor
Court in Haifa, Rami Levy, imposed heavy fines on two firms
for employing workers on Shabbos. The Aloniel firm, which
operates the McDonald's fast food chain here in Israel, had
to pay a fine of NIS 30,000 and an additional NIS 50,000 was
imposed on the owner of the franchise, Omri Padan. The state
representative, attorney Ravit Tzaddik, accused the firm of
illegally employing teenagers in 1997 at the Lev Hamifratz
mall and the Canyon Hachadash in Haifa. The firm made every
effort to push off proceedings and was successful for a long
time, but in the end, Judge Levy ruled last month that they
must pay the fines.
In a different ruling at the Tel Aviv court, Judge Rami Levy
imposed a NIS 55,000 fine on the Handyman firm for employing
Jewish workers on Shabbos. Levy found that it was clear from
the testimony of the workers that employees understood that
working on Shabbos was a condition of their employment, and
that they were not able to refuse working on Shabbos. When
giving his ruling Levy wrote: "The basic purpose of this law
. . . is that a worker should not be forced to give up his
protected rights. The need to prevent any unfair advantage
between employers, that is between those who uphold the law
and those who break it, requires the imposition of a penalty
appropriate to the protected interest, whose establishment
as an offense the law comes to protect."
The Ministry of Labor and Welfare expressed their
satisfaction at these two rulings issued by Judge Levy. "It
was proven that the ones to suffer most from working on
Shabbos are the employees themselves, who would much rather
spend the day of rest with their families, but who are
compelled to work against their will," a spokesman said.
McDonald's was fined for employing workers on Shabbos. The
international fast food chain, which operates several stores
throughout the country all week long including Shabbos
(instigating the demonstration last month at the entrance to
Beit Shemesh), employs many teenagers. Many complaints were
launched over the years against the chain for employing
youngsters for low wages. These teenagers, who want to make
some extra money, are tempted to accept any job offer,
including serving fast food at this treif food chain.
They earn minimum wage and have to work on Shabbos.
Other Employment Problems
There are other aspects, aside from Shabbos observance,
where terms of employment may conflict with a religious
person's convictions and requirements.
Yisrael Bermi, a religious driving examiner who works at the
Licensing Bureau in Kiryat Chaim, unwittingly became the
center of a controversial issue of public concern three
years ago. It all started when he refused to test a driving
student who came improperly dressed. Bermi went to the
student's driving teacher and explained to him that it went
against his principles to test a student dressed in such
immodest attire. "I cannot respect a person who has no
respect for her surroundings," he said and went on to
explain to the driving teacher that a student must come
properly dressed for the test.
A heated argument between the driving teacher and the
examiner ensued, and this quickly made its way to the media
which seized the opportunity to slam the "religious coercion
at the licensing bureau." Bermi would not be deterred and
held his ground. "It goes against my conscience," he
explained to the heads of the examination staff and of the
local licensing bureau. In the end the student was tested by
a different examiner.
The media continued to fan the flames of the issue and ran
to get a quote from then Minister of Transportation, Nachum
Langental, on the matter. Langental, who is religious
himself, spoke out against the examiner and said that he had
acted on his own "against express instructions which
obligate him to test all people." Langental added that "he
cannot act as judge, and if this doesn't suit him he doesn't
have to work for the Ministry of Transportation." He went as
far as to declare that the examiner would be subject to
disciplinary measures from the Ministry. The newspapers
reported that Langental said the solution to the examiner's
problem would be to "transfer him to the chareidi or Arabic
sectors. There he won't encounter the type of problems that
he came up against in Kiryat Chaim."
But contrary to the opinion of the Minister of
Transportation and the media, the Haifa Histadrut labor
union surprised everyone by supporting Bermi. Haifa area
Histadrut Chairman Baruch Zaltz told Yated reporter
Arye Zisman that in his opinion the examiner should be
praised for his courage to disqualify himself from testing
the student. "It is probable that as a result of his anger
at the student, he would have marked her very strictly and
failed her. Therefore, what he did was an act of integrity,
and he should be praised, not punished," he said.
In the past the Histadrut in Haifa protected its members who
were compelled to work on Shabbos "contrary to their
conscience and faith." This happened when a worker at one of
the factories in the north, that works round the clock and
on Shabbos, became newly observant. The worker requested to
be exempt from the Shabbos shift, but his employer
maintained that the worker had been hired on the assumption
that he would work on Shabbos and therefore, could not be
expected to change his work schedule. The Histadrut came to
the defense of the worker, explaining that his newly-
observant status must be respected. As a result the employer
ceded to the request and enabled the worker to keep his job
without having to be mechalel Shabbos.
The Ministry of Labor and Welfare is responsible for the
rights of laborers in Israel. All the cases mentioned above
were brought to the attention of this office, which for some
reason does not have a department dealing specifically with
the rights of religious workers. The office lacks any
special procedures for the rights of the religious worker,
just as there are no specific rules and regulations for
other sectors of society. There are various subjects
connected to kashrus, and the like which touch upon
religious issues. But there is still no separate set of
rules for the religious worker, in spite of the fact that
the ministry has been in religious hands for several
years.
On the other hand, there is the Work and Rest Hours Law
(that bans work on Shabbos), according to which the ministry
operates, at times successfully and other times without
success.
In spite of the fact that the State does not deal with the
religious issue, as described above, in certain situations
it is able to intervene for the good of the laborer,
especially when dealing with government institutions which
refuse to employ someone on the basis of his unwillingness
to work on Shabbos.
The main problem lies in the private sector. Unfortunately
the Ministry of Labor and Welfare is not always able to
enforce the law in the case of private employers. Only the
intervention of the Labor Courts has occasionally led to a
reduction of this shameful practice.
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