It is difficult to find reason in MK Simcha Rotman's attack on organized labor in Israel.
In the bill he submitted, he proposed to make it more difficult to organize workers in unorganized workplaces and to collect taxes for the labor unions, and proposed to impose mandatory arbitration, which would greatly reduce the power of the labor unions.
The proposals are a political self-goal.
They will alienate supporters and recruit opponents to the struggle for democratization of which he is one of the leaders.
At the head of the Constitution Committee in the Knesset, Rotman courageously leads a struggle, which has encountered strong opposition and whose success is not guaranteed, for the sake of repairing relations between the authorities in Israel.
It can be summarized as follows: a fight for the right of the Israelis to elect representatives to the legislative and executive branches who will fulfill the wishes of the citizens in the administration of the state, and a struggle for the regulation and limitation of the judiciary's ability to thwart the fulfillment of these wishes.
The cause of the struggle, therefore, is the defense of the founding political right of every democracy - the right that the government over us be with our consent and our opinion only.
So what did Rothman see attacking precisely now the conditions for fulfilling another constitutive right - the social right to the protection of labor organizations?
To weaken workers' organizations, to attack their ability to protect wider sections of society in Israel?
To make proposals that will surely mean reducing the share of the workers in the fruits of the Israeli economy?
After all, in this he apparently confirms the claims of his opponents, that the reform of the power relations between the authorities was not intended but to harm human rights.
But the truth is the opposite of the claims of his opponents.
Judges may rule against organized labor.
This is what happened in a series of rulings in the 1990s in Israel.
This is what happened in the USA, to the point of challenging the right to strike itself in the name of the right to property.
Labor organizations must not rely on judges to protect organized labor.
First, they must rely on the direct socio-economic struggle of the workers, and second - on their political strength and their ability to influence the public representatives in the Knesset.
The legal remedy for organized labor lies mainly in the legislation of labor laws in the Knesset.
The labor organizations can influence Knesset legislation directly, through political means, while in the courtrooms they have no influence.
There they depend on the changing worldviews of judges from the top decile.
Therefore, in pulling the line between the legislative authority and the judicial authority, the workers' organizations have a structural interest precisely in strengthening the legislature, that is, in the Levin reforms.
But Rothman in his proposals creates the opposite false representation for the working public, as if the reforms he is promoting in the Knesset committee are intended to harm the rights of the workers.
Why is the right to the protection of workers' organizations so important?
Because from a global comparative perspective, in countries where work is organized, the more organized it is - wages are relatively high and social conditions are improved, poverty has relatively receded and inequality is small.
Organized labor is the main tool in the hands of workers from the middle class and the lower deciles - those whose main political representative in Israel is the Likud movement - to secure for themselves a larger share of the national wealth.
Rothman's one hand directly harms the vital interests of many of the voters for the party leading the coalition he is a member of.
His other hand seeks to enact, in the name of that coalition, laws for the democratization of relations between the authorities.
One hand hits the other twice: once he creates the wrong impression that the struggle for democratization is supposedly a struggle to reduce social rights;
And for the second time, he damages the alliance between the forces promoting democratization, and especially the many Likud and Shas voters, and pushes into the arms of the opposition a political force such as the Histadrut, within which Likud has influence.
The Likud party and the Histadrut must, therefore, both for the sake of the social interests that they represent and for the sake of the social values that they are committed to, to join together to stamp out Ivan Rothman's harmful proposals.
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