Haifa, Israel-Striking workers shut down the Haifa Chemicals plant at Haifa on March 21. The strike at the potassium nitrate producer followed a union demand to cancel the firing of 40 out of the plant’s 250 workers by the management, an 8 percent wage increase, and an agreement to pay overtime as part of an overall wage agreement. Haifa management charges that the workers shut down operations and endangered lives and the surrounding area. A senior company official said that the wildcat strike led to an unsupervised shutdown of the plant’s production, with serious consequences. The strike shut down the Haifa plant for eight hours, and when the evening shift showed up for work, management prevented them from entering the plant. The union claims that management is demanding they sign a document that commits them to accept certain terms for shutting down the plant as part of any future labor dispute. The union responded by saying they will not make such a commitment. The union also decided to quit the Histadrut Labor Federation, which has represented the workers at Haifa Chemicals for over 40 years, charging that it had cooperated with the management behind the workers’ backs. In late January, Haifa Chemicals was forced to shut down operations due to the lengthy strike at Dead Sea Works (GM Feb. 7, 2011). Both of its plants at Haifa and Ramat Hovav were shut down, and only reopened in mid-February when the DSW strike ended. At the time, Haifa Chemicals CEO Nadav Shahar estimated that the strike at DSW had cost the company millions of dollars in lost production and sales.
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