Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI) will lead a delegation of senior trade unionists from the UK and Australia to visit Israel and Palestine from November 3-8. The delegation will meet with sister trade unionists from the Histadrut and Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unionists (PGFTU), with site visits to factories, and time spent in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Nablus. To keep up to date on the trip, follow TUFI on twitter.

According to this report in Globes, the daily financial newspaper, the Histadrut has decided to launch a 6.5 million shekel ad campaign on television to promote union membership.  While the Manufacturers’ Association condemned the planned ad campaign as “wretched timing” — not specifying when precisely was a good time, in their view, to promote union membership, Histadrut leader Ofer Eini defended the plan: “It is precisely at this time that unionization of employees is needed, especially at a time of vilification of organized labor.”

The International Union of Foodworkers, a Geneva-based global union federation, is today running on their website this report about a 5% wage increase won by flour mill workers in Israel.

According to the Maan news agency, public sector workers demanding a cost of living increase are due to strike against the Palestinian Authority tomorrow (Wednesday).  Full details here.

In an apparent escalation of the BDS (boycott divestment sanctions) campaign targetting the Jewish state, Britain’s giant public sector union Unison has called on a company to cease its activities in both the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel itself.

According to the union’s press release, “Unison today called on controversial security firm G4S to cease commercial activity in Israel and Palestine territories, because it is in breach of the Geneva Convention.”

The union claims that G4S provides security at some Israeli prisons which hold Palestinians, and that this is a breach of the Geneva convention.

Just in case anyone thought the call to withdraw from Israel as well as the occupied territories was a slip of the tongue, Unison General Secretary Dave Prentiss in his letter to G4S writes explicitly “I would urge you withdraw now from doing business in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.”

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s (PSC) Sarah Colborne noted that the Unison call to G4S was a significant development. “A union publicizing this is very significant,” she told the Electronic Intifada. “It’s a ground-breaking move: I’m not aware of this happening before within British trade unions.”

The PSC issued a press release lauding the union for its decision.

At this year’s Unison National Delegate Conference a lengthy resolution on Palestine was adopted which did not explicitly call on companies to cease all activities in Israel.  Instead, the focus was on a boycott of settlement goods.

According to the resolution adopted, which is binding on the Unison leadership,”UNISON supports boycotting Israeli settlement goods”.  The only part of the resolution which could lead to Unison calling on G4S to cease its activities in the country is a sentence supporting “campaigns to stop public service contracts being awarded to companies which are complicit in Israeli violations of international law, including the 4th Geneva Convention, for instance by contracts which service the illegal settlements, construct the Apartheid Wall or provide security in prisons holding Palestinians illegally transferred from the Occupied Territories”.

In other words, it seems that Unison wants to punish G4S in the UK for conducting activities in Israel and Palestine it disapproves of, but there is no blanket call for G4S to cease all activities in Israel.

This escalation of Unison’s support for a complete boycott of Israel — rather than a limited boycott of settlement goods — parallels the union’s opposition to Israeli academic Moty Cristal, whose visit to Britain was stopped by a Unison branch which thought that union policy included a blanket ban on all Israelis.

These small, incremental changes in union policy — which have no basis in the decisions taken by the National Delegate Conference — represent a form of “mission creep” which are leading one of Britain’s largest unions firmly in the direction of hostility towards Israel rather than support for a peace process that could result in a two-state solution to the conflict.

According to this report in Globes, the daily Israeli financial newspaper, a strike by port workers to protest the right-wing Netanyahu government’s decision to create two new privatized ports is legal and legitimate — but cannot take place before October 10th.

Port workers, members of the Histadrut (Israel’s national trade union center) are among the best-organized workers in the country, and they are concerned that the new ports will be non-union and low-wage.

Far-right members of the Netanyahu government have already punned about port workers being like cockroaches, and the need for an exterminator to be brought in to deal with the problem.