Recent years have seen a revolution in the unionization of construction workers. Tens of thousands of workers have been joining the Construction and Allied Industries Workers Union every year, becoming part of a huge force of unionized workers. The change lies not only in the very fact of unionizing, but in the new sectors that the union now encompasses.
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Previously, unionized workers could mostly be found in large government-owned companies. In recent years, more and more workers from the hi-tech and advanced industries and from construction companies have joined unions; even foreign and Palestinian workers have begun to unionize. A process of crucial importance is now taking place: worker unionization in the wider circles of the construction industry.
In the past months, my colleagues and I have registered thousands of workers in the Construction and Allied Industries Workers Union, coming from all parts of the construction sector: foremen, safety managers, repairmen, scaffolders, mobile and tower crane operators, heavy equipment operators and infrastructure workers, plumbers, fire safety workers, HVAC technicians, Palestinian laborers, and more.
Workers have been joining the Construction and Allied Industries Workers Union after learning about their welfare rights, academic scholarships available to them and their children, professional training programs, and conferences sponsored by the Foundation for the Encouragement and Development of the Israeli Construction Industry. These rights are protected by the union's collective labor agreement and the extension orders it contains, and by collective contracts.
Besides the fact that unionization improves work conditions, it will significantly improve worker safety and protect workers' lives.
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Unionization is necessary not only to improve salaries and work conditions. A concrete pump operator who is not a union member has no one to watch his back – figuratively and literally. Manpower companies employing these workers have proven time and again that they are only interested in the bottom line – their profit at the end of the month. Workers are consequently forced to work overtime and under unlawful conditions that endanger their lives and those of their colleagues.
I have no doubt that unionization will dramatically reduce the number of work-related accidents on construction sites. Once workers are unionized, the union protects them and enforces safety conditions as a top priority – not simply as a legal requirement. Workers are taking things into their own hands, and, by joining the Construction Workers Union, putting their trust in the union and its ability to protect their rights.
Itzhak Moyal is chairman of the Construction and Allied Industries Workers Union and deputy chairman of the Foundation for the Encouragement and Development of the Construction Industry in Israel.
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