Court bans Electric Corp. workers' sanctions, preventing blackouts

The labor court halted sanctions planned by the workers of the Israel Electric Corporation on Thursday, thus ruling out the possibility of nationwide blackouts.

The Israel Electric Corporation had planned to cut power across the country for an hour on Thursday, imploring consumers to reduce general use of energy-guzzling electrical appliances such as washing machines, ovens, driers and dishwashers.

The IEC said that due to planned employee sanctions, its generating capacity could have been reduced to only 6,300 megawatts - exactly the demand level forecasted for the evening hours.

However, after IEC management petitioned the Labor Court to order, power-plant workers were ordered back to stations as to to avoid possible shortages.

Amos Lasker, the IEC's CEO, had accused Thursday the workers' union of taking over the generating plants through its sanctions and "in practice, the management of the entire electrical production system."

He called the sanctions "a thuggish act that is causing enormous damage to Israel's electricity industry, and is preventing the company from meeting demand and causing serious harm to customers."

Lasker added the company plans on taking the union to court "urgently." He explained that due to the sanction, staff cannot receive the necessary data on production capacity or on electricity supply to customers.

The union is blocking the completion of renovations and upgrades at a number of generating plants, which were scheduled to be completed by the start of spring.

In addition, employees are refusing to repair a number of faults at power stations.

One production unit at the Hagit plant is still out of service, as is another at the Haifa power station, both for scheduled improvements. But this week, a second unit at Hagit failed, and two units at the Rabin power plant near Hadera are also out of service due to problems, while a number of other units are either not working or operating at less than full capacity.

The union said it would refrain from any damage to consumers, and called on management to put the Hadera station back into full operation. In addition, the workers asked the Manufacturers Association to intervene to prevent damage to thousands of businesses around the country.