Employers are looking for workers in a market full of the unemployed, but are unable to find them • Uriel Lin, President of the Association of Chambers of Commerce: Pay a grant to workers who return to work
Queue to enter the employment bureau in Tel Aviv, last year
Photography:
Joshua Joseph
Employers wonder - why does the Treasury continue the Knesset model, when it is clear that employees are not interested in returning to work when they receive a grant for being on "vacation"?
For example, Ran Katzman, CEO of a large catering company owned by Dan Hotels, previously applied through Israel Today to recruit employees, offering them an additional NIS 3,000 grant, if they persist for six months. Katzman, like many other employers , Seeks to recruit dozens of workers at a higher wage than the minimum wage and since then the Knesset program has not succeeded in doing so.
One of the concerns of employers is that even employees of businesses that have not been harmed at all, or have not been significantly harmed, receive Corona grants.
Thus employers enjoy a reserve of employees in case they need to later, as well as a deferral of payment of compensation.
Employees enjoy sickness benefits until they resign and are then entitled to unemployment benefits. In an appeal to the Treasury, we received a laconic and evasive answer: To the Khalat.
The finance minister's office adheres to the Knesset model, although it is clear that it is already more burdensome on the economy than it helps it.
The plan they proposed at the beginning of last week included a payment clause of the full sickness benefit, or unemployment, for two months - in the first and fourth month of the employee's return, or the start of his work.
The employee will not decide on challah
Uriel Lin, president of the Association of Chambers of Commerce, proposes principles for the outline of the end of the Knesset - to prohibit workers from going to the Khalat on their own initiative.
An employee will be able to choose whether to work, or resign.
Another principle that Lin proposes: for some of the workers who return to work, at the low wage levels and according to a defined wage ranking, the sick leave grant will be paid, even after they return to work.
Thus, for example, an employee who is in the Knesset or receives unemployment benefits, who returns to work, will receive a special incentive for a period of six months. The incentive rate will be about 50% of the amount he was entitled to under the Khalat.
In other words, an employee who is entitled to a Khalat grant of NIS 6,700 will receive an incentive of NIS 3,300. According to Lynn, if these principles are adopted, within about six months the number of Khalat workers will be significantly reduced.
The cost of this incentive is estimated at NIS 1.5 billion by the end of June, but the state will thus achieve a lower unemployment target and faster growth than currently expected.