Summary
The Supreme Committee (Ha-Vaad Ha-Elion), an organization of nonaffiliated diamond workers established in early 1941, a mixture of individual workers and Communists, which became a serious source of opposition to the politically affiliated unions and a mouthpiece of unrest in the factories (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.118).
Details
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It gathered the growing number of nonaffiliated workers — 220 in all towns in autumn 1941 in Table 3.4, rising to 1,400-1,700 by winter 1946 — whose criticism of the unions’ organizational inadequacy was also reflected in sporadic strikes in individual factories in 1941-1942 (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.115, p.118).
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Its emergence, with the pressure to respond to workers’ demands, forced the Histadrut and the “minority unions” to turn from mere accommodation with the Palestine Diamond Manufacturers’ Association’s union-splintering policy to a more active coalescence of interest and action (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.118).
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In January 1942 the nonaffiliated workers organized under the Supreme Committee and struck six Tel Aviv factories; the PDMA refused to negotiate and the Histadrut refused to lead the strike, and after three weeks the DWO persuaded the committee to call it off, after which the PDMA excluded it from the March 1942 agreement negotiations (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.169-170).