The port unions, which comprise 2,400 workers earning double the average public sector salary, are threatening to strike to block the government’s plans [to open a private port to compete with the two state ports].The Israeli government is planning to issue a tender to build a privately run seaport in the coming months, pledging to end the monopolies of the two main ports of Ashdod and Haifa.
However, the government is putting together competing plans for how to keep the country’s ports operating in the event dockworkers walk off their jobs to protest.
Israel’s Transportation Ministry has begun exploring the possibility of bringing in foreign labor to stand in for striking workers and has discussed the idea with various overseas companies. Meanwhile, Naftali Bennett, Israel’s economics and trade minister, has raised the idea of bringing in Israel Defense Forces troops to operate the ports.
