A complaint against the Israeli government for blatant violations of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Protection of Wages Convention has been filed by nine global trade unions on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian workers.
The complaint highlights the obligations of Israeli authorities to redress and remedy a range of abuses, including unpaid wages and withheld benefits for more than 200,000 Palestinian workers employed in Israel.
These abuses have led to millions of dollars of lost income, causing severe financial insecurity, economic distress, deprivation of basic services, and widespread hardship for the affected workers and their families, who have no access to judicial remedies.
Filed on 27 September 2024, the joint complaint details the exploitative conditions faced by the Palestinian workers from the West Bank and Gaza, formally or informally employed in Israel at the time of the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023. The global unions’ complaint is based on evidence showing that over 200,000 workers have not been paid for work completed before 7 October and have received no wages since.
BWI General Secretary, Ambet Yuson, said: “International law is clear: no crisis, not even war, can justify the suspension of labour rights or the denial of justice to workers. Palestinian workers, many of whom were employed in Israel’s construction sector, have the right to be paid their outstanding wages. We will not be satisfied until justice is delivered for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian workers who have been denied their due, and a ceasefire is reached.”