Employees of Haaretz will go on an open-ended strike beginning Wednesday afternoon, the newspaper’s employees committee said Tuesday. “Tomorrow, all of us, employees of all sections of the paper and the online edition, are going on strike,” the announcement said. It added that “no employee will take pictures, no worker will write articles, no one will edit, design, produce or interview until the end of the strike. Remember: there is no paper without journalists.” The strike action at Haaretz, which is expected to affect the paper’s Internet site as well, will last one day. Friday’s edition is planned to be printed as usual.

The workers, who face wide-scale layoffs in the near future, said that at 4 p.m. Wednesday they will hold a meeting inside the paper’s headquarters on Schocken Street in south Tel Aviv, after which they will launch the open-ended strike. The workers said that management continues to ignore their protest efforts, creating the need for more drastic measures. Last Sunday night, Haaretz employees held a partial work stoppage, shutting down the paper for around two hours in what was the first such action by the paper’s employees. Shouting “No newspaper without journalists,” employees of Haaretz and The Marker– which is published in cooperation with Haaretz – blocked the Schocken Street headquarters and demanded answers about the size and scope of the impending layoffs.

“Ha’aretz” photographer Tommer Appelbaum talks to the newspaper employees during a demonstration in front of the newspaper’s offices in Tel Aviv on September, 23 2012 (Photo: Activestills)

With the future of their unpaid salaries and pension funds in doubt, hundreds of Ma’ariv employees marched in Jerusalem on Wenesday, where they demanded answers from the newspaper’s parent company IDB Holding Corp.

Shouting “Nochi [Dankner, IDB controlling shareholder], where’s the money,” Haggai Matar, head of the reporters committee organized by Ma’ariv workers, said they still have not heard from management regarding how much of their outstanding salaries or pension funds terminated employees will receive, a fact that only causes greater concern.

MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) expressed today support to workers protests in Haaretz and Maariv. He called Maariv’s possible closure a danger to Israeli democracy, which he said cannot exist without the free press. “This morning we learned that masses of workers will go home, but a newspaper called Ma’ariv will continue to be published. A few people will be selected, if their politics match that of the rightwing extremist who purchased the paper,” he stated.

MK Khenin and social-justice activist Alon-Lee Green have drafted a bill that would enable the workers of failing companies to take over the businesses with the help of a public fund.  The private member’s bill, to be submitted to the Knesset right after the fall Jewish holidays, was crafted to help ailing companies such as Phoenicia Glass in the north and the Maariv newspaper. Employees of failed companies should not have to pay the price of management’s mistakes and should be able to seek help from a public fund for distressed companies, Khenin said. The fund would provide financial support to let the workers take over the company.

Related:

               Journalists on struggle against expected firings

               Communist party activists proposes law to let workers take over businesses