>>23325608
>Histradrut
“Histadrut Address to the 5th ITUC Congress”
https://youtu.be/-076tJSdtF8
19, 2022
“The Histadrut Turns 100: A Look into its Far-Reaching Role in Shaping Israel and its Workers”
https://en.davar1.co.il/269531/
Last Update: 12/21/2020 17:07
From labor unions to cooperative grocery stores to the Haganah defense force: Dr. Mordechai Naor speaks to the strength of the Histadrut in the first decades of its existence | "A member of the Histadrut, from the moment he was born until the moment he died, lived within the Histadrut"
Today it still holds a unique position in the union world – it is not an umbrella organization of labor unions as can be seen in other places, but rather the primary union that the worker belongs to. Workers sign up directly to the Histadrut, which then represents them and their rights in a variety of bodies. The Histadrut's uniqueness, however, stems back from its early formative years, as Naor explains
"Over the years, I learned that the Histadrut had its own bank, newspaper, supermarket chain, education system and its own employment office. I lived within the Histadrut state," he said.
The Histadrut was established in 1920 as a workers' organization of all the "Hebrew workers in the Land of Israel," but in the first decades of its existence, it was much more than that. Its leaders, including David Ben-Gurion, Berl Katzenelson and Yitzhak Tabenkin, saw it as an instrument for building the Jewish national home, and a body that would encompass the entire life of the worker in the spirit of the values of equality and solidarity.
Naor explained how Ben Gurion envisioned this Histadrut community starting with the working class and eventually spreading outward to reach the entire society, in the spirit of communalism and socialism.
The first years of the Histadrut were characterized by the establishment of organizations to assist workers and the advancement of the Yishuv in Israel, or the absorption of pre-existing organizations into the Histadrut. These included the health fund that took care of the members' health, Bank Hapoalim (the Workers’ Bank) and Hamashbir HaMerkazi – a cooperative that assisted farms and cooperatives in purchasing food and agricultural equipment, and the Society for Public Works, which later developed into the construction company Solel-Boneh.
The Histadrut, functioning as a wide cooperative economy, also founded companies and factories and answered the need for jobs and promoted economic development of the Yishuv. These included Yachin, Hakal (a company for agricultural processing), Mekorot, Ayron, Arkia and more.
Until the 1950s, membership in the Histadrut was limited to Jews only. However, the Histadrut supported the establishment of the Brit Poalei Eretz Israel (Union of Workers in the Land of Israel), a parallel organization that invited Israeli Arabs to join. Naor cites this initiative as a great success in Haifa, a mixed city.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/02/world/middleeast/israel-labor-union-strike.html
Histadrut, or the General Organization of Workers in Israel, was also pivotal to the founding of the State of Israel. It was set up in 1920, at a time when trade unions were a critical vector of political and economic influence in many countries.
Its purpose in its early decades was both to serve the needs of workers at a time of Jewish immigration to what was then British-administered Palestine, and to lay the groundwork for the foundation of Israel as a state. It helped to establish the industrial, financial and economic institutions from which the nation emerged in 1948. The union’s leader in the early years, David Ben-Gurion, became Israel’s first prime minister.
https://www.israelstory.org/episode/david-ben-gurion/
Finally, it was he [David Ben-Gurion] who – while shepherding the State into existence and shaping more or less all of its institutions from the Mossad to the IDF, from the Histadrut Labor Union to the national Bible Quiz