A committee headed by the deputy governor of the Bank of Israel, Professor Zvi Eckstein, is preparing a series of recommendations that would formalize the rules and regulations regarding the employment of foreign workers in Israel.

The recommendations include the establishment of an independent authority that would handle matters of employment of foreign workers, bilateral treaties with their countries of origin, limiting their work permits to specific seasons during the year and conditioning work permits on the lack of available local workers.

"In Israel there is no shortage of unskilled labor, among other reasons because we have absorbed many immigrants whose level of education is low," Eckstein says.

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The committee, which includes representatives from the ministries of finance, interior and industry and trade, was established to implement the government's socio-economic agenda, whose main goals are reducing poverty and expanding employment.

Five years ago, a similar committee recommended the establishment of an immigration authority that would create policy on foreign workers and execute it. However, its creation has been delayed and it is not expected to begin work before January 2009.

Eckstein is working to move forward the date of the authority's establishment, most probably under the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Employment.

The main purpose of such a body would be to counter pressures to increase the quotas for bringing less expensive labor hands from abroad.

"The authority will serve as the lobbyist against the Ministry of Agriculture, for example, which by its nature is the lobbyist of the farmers," Eckstein said.

Compared to other countries, the number of foreign workers employed in agriculture in Israel reaches 60 percent of the overall work force. In the Netherlands, for example, that figure is 10 percent, Eckstein says.

Eckstein considers bilateral treaties with the governments of the foreign workers' countries of origin as a fundamental requirement for limiting the numbers of foreign laborers. These countries would have to agree to limit the fees workers, who wish to travel abroad for work, have to pay. If, Eckstein says, these workers only had to pay for their travel and immunizations, they could come to Israel, work for eight months during the relevant crop collection seasons, and return home having made a profit.

In addition, Eckstein says that the authority responsible for foreign workers would also ensure that their salaries would not be so low as to undermine Israeli salaries.

"We cannot have a high-tech country competing with Silicon Valley, and a low-tech one competing with China. This will create huge [socio-economic] gaps in society," Eckstein said.