Workers at the Israeli biopharma company Kamada walked off the production line on Wednesday afternoon. Kamada, which has made lists of the promising companies in Israel, manufactures at the Beit Kama intersection in the Negev. Dozens of employees walked off the production lines after management refused to sign a collective employment agreement. The company has a payroll of 300, on the basis of individual contracts.

Workers meeting in front of Kamada, March 2013 (Photo: Histadrut)

Kamada, considered one of Israel’s most promising biomedical companies in 2013, is listed on the benchmark Tel Aviv 100 index. It also recently floated stock on Nasdaq. In 2012, it made the prestigious Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a list ranking the fastest growing companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the fields of technology, media, communications, life sciences and clean-tech. The company’s employees have been organizing for the past eight months. Several weeks ago, the Histradrut declared a labor dispute, a step that allowed the country’s largest labor union to strike the company after two weeks.