Defense industry’s future workers: ultra-Orthodox men without military experience
The ultra-Orthodox don’t want to serve in the military. That’s no secret. Currently, the heads of the Haredi parties are among the leaders of the government’s constitutional coup – the drive to prevent the Supreme Court from overturning legislation, and in case it does, this decision could be invalidated by means of a simple majority in a Knesset vote.
Their motivation is to try and guarantee discriminatory budgeting for the benefit of the Haredi school system, as well as favoritism when it comes to exemption from compulsory military service. The Haredi parties are even demanding that legislation on exemptions from the draft be enshrined as a Basic Law, which would then never be subject to judicial review.
not having to risk their lives during service in the Israel Defense Forces, the Haredim are actually enthusiastic about joining the security forces in altogether different ways. Last week, United Torah Judaism lawmakers Moshe Gafni, Yakov Asher and Yitzhak Pindrus submitted a bill on the issue, which passed a preliminary vote.
The bill would obligate government corporations (including the health maintenance organizations, the Bank of Israel, the water companies and others) to employ Haredim without any required skills, at a rate double their percentage of the population.
Since a large percentage of government corporations are defense firms, this means that Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries would presumably be forced to hire Haredim for 18 percent of their positions, whereas working-age Haredim account for 9 percent of the population.
This is an interesting double message: to serve in the Armored Corps, eat dirt, and possibly risk your life? That, the Haredim aren’t allowed to do, because after all, they serve the Jewish people from their places of study. But to work in companies that develop protective systems for tanks? The Haredim are looking in that direction, and want to ensure that these companies are forced to accept them, at a rate double their share of the population.
An unrealistic bill
In order to ensure that Haredi workers constitute 18 percent of Rafael’s employees, the bill mandates that there will be no excuse that a company can use to avoid that. Prerequisites, like an engineering degree, and of course a knowledge of English and having passed the highest level of the matriculation exam in mathematics, will be valid for others. Not for the Haredim.
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Therefore, according to the bill, Rafael, which needs expert professionals with a knowledge of engineering, would have to accept the fact that 18 percent of its employees were Haredim with little or no knowledge of English and math. Not only that, it would have to employ Haredim at a rate of 18 percent at all levels, including in senior positions.
The bill therefore means that Rafael would have to employ as head of a department in charge of developing the next generation of the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system – someone who didn’t study the core curriculum, doesn’t speak English and has no academic degree – just because he’s Haredi and just because Rafael is required to fill the position with a Haredi employee.
Rafael is in a relatively good situation. The bill sponsored by Gafni, Asher and Pindrus includes a similar demand regarding local government, to the effect that it would be mandatory to employ Haredi workers at a proportion double that of the Haredi students in that city.
Gilad Malach of the Israel Democracy Institute made a calculation and found that a secular city like Haifa, in which 16 percent of the students are Haredi, would have to make sure that at least 30 percent of municipal workers, at all levels up to the highest, would be Haredi.
It should be noted that this bill is unrealistic, and would lead to one of three illogical results. The first is that local governments and the government corporations would comply with the law and become filled with unqualified employees. Employing someone without an academic degree as the head of a department for developing weapons systems at Rafael is not an optimal choice, and the quality of public services could deteriorate badly.
The second possibility is that Rafael will shy away from diminishing the quality of its human resources and opt to just pay a salary to Haredim, as long as they don’t come to work. This is bribery – a corrupt bill that would lead to the creation of thousands of fictitious positions for Haredim only.
The third possibility is that nothing will happen at all, because it’s an unrealistic demand – and that the bill is effectively a gimmick that nobody is taking seriously. As with the proposal to freeze mortgages, in this case too Gafni, who used to be a serious member of Knesset, is currently engaged in floating unrealistic proposals merely for the purpose of getting headlines and publicity.
A lenient policy
Since 2017, there has been a demand for affirmative action in hiring Haredi workers in the public sector. The target is for 7 percent of all new civil service workers annually to be Haredi, but the government has managed to reach only 5 percent. The fact that many Haredim lack an academic degree and have no command of English makes their acceptance for jobs difficult, if the employer doesn’t drastically lower the requirements.
Eitan Regev, a senior researcher at the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, supports the policy of lowering the requirements in order to enable Haredim to be hired in the public sector in jobs where it’s possible, particularly Haredi women. Regev suggests waiving the demand for an academic degree in some jobs and allowing women who are graduates of Haredi high schools to be hired for those jobs.
In his assessment, these are outstanding candidates, and the only reason they lack a higher education is ideological opposition from Haredim. Hiring them for jobs in the public sector would contribute to its diversity, to improving its quality and to a greater involvement of the Haredi community in what goes on in the country, he says.
Haredi workers in the public sector, he says, have managed to reach higher-paying positions and have high productivity. That’s because the rules of promotion in the public sector forced them to get further education. Furthermore, these are jobs that are convenient for Haredim, especially women, in Jerusalem.
There is a heated debate surrounding Regev’s policy proposal as to whether it’s a good idea to lower requirements in order to allow Haredi women to be hired at lower-level positions in the public sector. But nobody would consider forcing the hiring of workers without essential requirements for senior positions as well – and at a tremendous rate that would necessarily lead to the hiring of badly performing employees.
Removing the barrier
Proof of how far-reaching this proposal is can be found by comparing it to all the existing proposals regarding affirmative action for socioeconomically weaker populations. For example, there is currently affirmative action legislation for the employment of Druze and Ethiopian Israelis, which gives them priority in hiring whenever they have abilities that are identical to those of other candidates.
The present bill takes this affirmative action, applies it to Haredim, and expands it so that it would be mandatory to prefer a Haredi even if he lacks the skills. And that, as mentioned, is at a rate that could reach 30 percent of the employees.
Clearly, this is blatant preferential treatment for the Haredi population, while flouting all the rules of equality towards other weaker populations. The Supreme Court would not lend a hand to such a non-egalitarian law, but it’s exactly for this purpose that the Haredim are promoting the emasculation of the court: so nobody stops them from receiving more and more unrealistic benefits.
But with their aggressive hunger for power, the Haredim are forgetting that the Supreme Court is not the barrier they are confronting. Another barrier is reality. It’s impossible to require that Rafael accept 18 percent of employees who lack skills, and then expect Israel to continue to be a technological power in the field of developing weapons.
It’s impossible to expect the public sector to provide thousands of fictitious positions to only Haredim and become a corrupt job machine. And it’s impossible to evade all the duties of the security forces in Israel and at the same time benefit from all the perks of convenient jobs in the defense industries.
These are unrealistic aspirations that would lead to a collapse of the government corporations, a collapse in the quality of service provided by local authorities, and a collapse in the overall quality of life and the standard of living in the country. In the end, there will be nobody left to pay for all these corruption parties, and that’s a problem that removing the barrier of the Supreme Court won’t help solve.