Israel Electric Corp. fires Ethiopian workers despite gov't order

Less than a month after the government ordered all its ministries and agencies to employ workers of Ethiopian descent, the Israel Electric Corporation has fired two of the four Ethiopians employed in its operations department.

The directors general of the Prime Minister's Office and the Immigrant Absorption Ministry tried to intervene, as did MK Michael Eitan (Likud), the World Zionist Organization and others, but to no avail.

The two fired employees, electrical engineers employed in the construction of the Gezer power station, have been with the company since 1994. They were fired after three years, but reinstated three months later, and had thus been on the job for n ine years and 11 months as of this week. Firing them now ensured that they would not reach tenure status at 10 years.

Since 2006, the operations department has laid off more than 300 workers because of a steep decline in development projects.

"Among the workers fired are Israelis of all ethnic groups - Druze, Circassians, Muslims and others," said IEC spokesman Dedi Golan. "If the company could guarantee work for years, it would accept these workers for tenure, but unfortunately, that is not the case."

One of the men fired, Yitzhak Tzegahon, agrees that his firing was unrelated to his origins, but thinks the company should have been more helpful precisely because of his origins. Not only do Ethiopians have greater trouble finding employment, he said, but they are underrepresented at the IEC.

In a letter to TEBKA - Organization of Law and Justice for Ethiopian Immigrants, IEC's management stated that it employs 47 Ethiopians, including 26 with tenure. TEBKA director Itzik Desa questions these figures. But even if they are correct, he said, that makes 47 workers out of more than 13,000, whereas there should be 200 based on the percentage of Ethiopians in the population.

Desa maintained that the IEC's refusal to engage in affirmative action discriminates against Ethiopians, who face prejudice and racism in the job market.

"We are not talking about taking on workers of Ethiopian origin who are of a lower level than their colleagues, but rather affording an equal opportunity to Ethiopian applicants, who have no connections and no political clout," Desa wrote this week to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a request that he force the IEC and other government companies to assist Ethiopian immigrants.