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Palestine Labor League

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Summary

The organisation established by the Histadrut to organise Arab workers, whose competition with the Palestine Arab Workers Society in other workplaces exacerbated the railway unions’ rivalry in the early 1930s (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 1904).

Details

  • Lockman introduces the Palestine Labor League (PLL) in Chapter 4 as recently established by the Histadrut to organise Arab workers, and discusses it in Chapter 5 (line 1904, with the cross-reference to Chapter 5 given in the text).

  • Chapter 5 gives the PLL’s establishment: it was created in 1932, in Hebrew Brit Po’alei Eretz Yisra’el and in Arabic Ittihad ‘Ummal Filastin, its charter drawn up by Histadrut officials and ratified by the executive committee in May 1932, its Arab members drawn first from the Haifa Harbor Workers’ Union formed after the April 1932 lightermen’s strike. The grandiose name was the one the Histadrut’s 1927 third congress had intended for a binational labour federation that was never formed; the PLL was in fact a small Histadrut auxiliary for Arab workers (lines 2332-2340).

  • Its creation foreclosed Arab workers becoming full and equal members of a transformed, non-Zionist Histadrut, and rendered Hashomer Hatza’ir’s call for joint unions in mixed workplaces largely irrelevant. For the rest of the mandate, in fact until 1959 when the Histadrut allowed Arabs full membership, the PLL (renamed the Israel Labor League after 1948) was the organisation to which Arab workers organised under Histadrut tutelage were consigned; it was run exclusively by Jewish Histadrut officials, its budget came almost entirely from the Histadrut and other Zionist sources, and it cleaved faithfully to the MAPAI line. Members gained access to Kupat Holim clinics and special loan funds in return for dues (lines 2336-2340).

  • Its day-to-day organiser was Eliyahu Agassi, hired in summer 1932; in summer 1934 Reuven Zaslani joined him as Arab Department secretary while simultaneously coordinating the Haganah’s Arab intelligence (lines 2340-2344, 2445-2456).

  • Lockman’s Chapter 5 record of the PLL in practice: short-lived nuclei in Haifa (harbour workers, bakery workers, Vacuum Oil, Shell Oil barrel makers, Acre and Nazareth), the 1932-33 Nesher Cement Factory quarry organisation destroyed by contractor Musbah al-Shaqifi’s lockout, harassment and firings and by Palestine Arab Workers Society pressure; a claimed no more than 200 members around Haifa through 1934; a shift to Jaffa in 1934 (about one hundred stevedore members claimed by fall 1934) followed by the loss of the Jaffa dockworkers by the end of 1935; and virtual quiescence in late 1935, the Histadrut’s Arab Committee not meeting between May 1935 and February 1936 (lines 2361-2540).

  • Lockman attributes the PLL’s failure to consolidate a stable base to PAWS (and later other Arab union) rivalry, the Arab workforce’s character and circumstances, and above all the low priority and minuscule resources the Histadrut assigned it — “in effect, Agassi was the PLL” — and its purely reactive stance; the Palestine Communist Party charged that the PLL’s purpose was to give the Histadrut’s conquest of labour “an internationalist cover” (lines 2395-2412).

  • Chapter 6 gives the PLL in the revolt: by January 1937 Agassi reported it had since 1932 contacted some 2,500 Arab workers, issued 1,100 membership cards, organised thirteen unions and led several strikes, but retained no more than fifteen completely loyal Arab workers in Haifa and Jaffa combined and fifty or sixty on its periphery, all its sponsored unions defunct; it functioned in the revolt years as an employment agency for workers deemed reliable, an intelligence source for the Hagana, a channel for Jewish Agency money to keep Haifa harbour open, and a propaganda arm — and its organ from March 1937 was Haqiqat al-Amr (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 2971-3052). Lockman’s retrospect judges its 1930s failure inherent in its conception: a Histadrut initiative could not be perceived by Arabs as nonpolitical, especially once its bond with the Hebrew labor campaign became a public issue from 1934 (lines 3056-3074).

Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Histadrut, Palestine Arab Workers Society, Eliyahu Agassi, Reuven Zaslani, Abba Hushi, Arab Workers’ Society, Nesher Cement Factory

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