Rothschild Boulevard, so beloved by Tel Aviv dog owners, can be understood through Ivan Pavlov's famous experiment on dogs. Pavlov sought to examine the relationship between food, which is an unconditioned stimulus, and salivation, which is an unconditioned response. Between the stimulus and the response, he introduced the ringing of a bell, turning the original stimulus into a conditioned one that produced the same involuntary reaction of salivation.
Israeli society, with your encouragement, continues time and again to “salivate” at the sound of familiar rhetorical triggers, the verbal bells, such as “tycoons,” “Strauss Milky,” “executive salaries,” “contract workers,” “outsourcing,” and other popular slogans. Gradually, Pavlov’s controlled salivation has turned into an unrestrained Israeli salivation that calls for sweeping and indiscriminate destruction of foundational principles in the modern democratic Western society that we all wish to be part of.
In this way, political and social opportunists continue to misuse and manipulate the term “contractor” and insist on glorifying direct employment at all costs, in every situation, in every profession, and in every service, as if there is no other legitimate model.
At the same time, there is a striking inconsistency. When facing geopolitical and political challenges, many readily adopt a global perspective. Yet when it comes to understanding the fundamental logic and classical conditioning of modern Western economies, which operate in a global environment and focus on core activities, the tendency is to reach instinctively for a dogmatic and populist socialist stance.
And then, to your surprise, two quiet and velvet revolutionary shifts took place almost unnoticed in Israel in 2014. The first was the dramatic and historic improvement in the wages and working conditions of cleaning workers employed exclusively through professional cleaning companies. These workers received a 20 percent increase in salary, as well as significantly strengthened pension security and long term financial prospects for one of the most vulnerable populations in the country.
The second shift was the full and solid regulatory restructuring of the cleaning industry, which became one of the most regulated employment sectors in the Israeli economy. This transformation did not occur through reflexive calls for “direct employment” but through a complete reset of thinking and education among everyone involved in the cleaning services sector, placing the cleaning worker and the most vulnerable among us at the center of attention and importance.
Direct employment is not a magic formula and can quickly become a false promise. Even practical labor leaders acknowledge that the demand for “direct employment” and for workers to be “shoulder to shoulder” is correct, legitimate, necessary, and moral only when referring to professions and services that are at the core of an organization’s activity. It is unthinkable that teachers would be employed in a school through indirect employment, just as it is unacceptable for bank tellers in a bank, nurses in hospitals, or drivers in a bus company. The list goes on. This method of employment in core professions is undoubtedly inauthentic, harmful, and designed to save money at the expense of workers, and it must be eliminated immediately.
Cleaning services, by their very nature, will never be at the core of an organization’s activity, interests, or expertise. They are peripheral to the organization’s main mission, an essential component of service delivery, and their execution often takes place during hours when the organization is not operating: early mornings, evenings, weekends, and so on. This is a field that must be managed with strict operational discipline: professionalism, backup and contingency capabilities, adherence to schedules, training, safety, expertise in recruiting cleaning staff, supervision, and complex logistics. For these reasons alone, outsourcing such activity is not only justified but also wise and responsible.
Once a modern and comprehensive industry wide collective agreement was signed in the cleaning sector, and once the industry became thoroughly regulated through dedicated legislation, combined self enforcement, and joint enforcement with the representative labor union of cleaning workers, it is time to stop “salivating” and to stop searching for opportunistic political jet fuel elsewhere.
