A Union That Is Big Business

The leggy El Al stewardess belongs to it, and so does the professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, the orange picker in the kibbutz and the housewife in Haifa. Israel's Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and most of his Cabinet are card-carrying, dues-paying members. All are enrolled in an extraordinary organization called the Histadrut, Israel's huge and powerful 900,000-member labor federation.

Histadrut, literally "the organization," is really far more than a union: it is big business. Through a holding company, Hevrat Ovdim, it controls 2,000 Israeli businesses and farm cooperatives, employs a quarter of Israel's 800,000 wage earners, grows 75% of the country's food and accounts for 26% of Israel's $2.3 billion gross national product. Last week it announced that it will form its own manufacturers association to compete with a similar association now operating for industry.

Rapid Tentacles. Histadrut's possessions include the Workers' Bank, Israel's third largest (135 branch offices and $190 million in deposits); Solel Boneh, a construction firm that has built $100 million worth of projects in eleven African and Asian countries, including Katmandu airport in Nepal and the University of Ife in Western Nigeria; Koor Industries, a complex of 30 factories that turns out everything from cement and glass to steel and light bulbs; the Zim shipping company; and 90% of Israel's domestic bus and truck transport.

Founded in 1920 as a union of kibbutzim laborers, Histadrut rapidly tentacled into organizing industrial workers, building factories and financing housing developments. From the start it was meant to be far more than a labor organization: it was an association of Jews formed to create the State of Israel and provide it with a viable economy. Former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, himself Histadrut secretary general from 1921 to 1935, described it as an "alliance of pioneers of a homeland, founders of a state, creators of a nation, builders of an economy, disseminators of a culture."

Three Rooms & a Plymouth. Because rapid economic growth is its overriding objective, Histadrut plows back into development all its profits, which amounted to about $50 million in 1964. "Our profit is the development of the country," says Aharon Becker, 59, secretary general of Histadrut and chairman of Hevrat Ovdim. Becker forgoes pay for his jobs, lives instead on his $400-a-month as Knesset Deputy. Though one of Israel's five most powerful leaders, he prefers the anonymity of his 1962 grey Plymouth and three-room apartment in Tel Aviv's workers' housing development.

The fact that they are simultaneously labor bureaucrats, politicians, economic planners and corporate executives does not make Histadrut leaders schizo phrenic. In their philosophy of Zionism all conflicts are reconciled. Zionism, though it is socialistic in favoring collective ownership, is also a nationalist movement that does not admit class conflicts within the Israeli community. Thus the Histadrut leaders calmly fix prices and wages in their own enterprises, setting a pattern for all industry, and rarely permit strikes. At the same time they also encourage private investment, aware that it is necessary for the sake of more rapid economic growth.

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