Summary
The organisation of the government of Palestine’s middle-level civil servants, formed in 1928, almost three-quarters of its members Arabs; resolutely apolitical, universalist and unaffiliated to any labour organisation, it was pushed by wartime inflation into a distinctive militancy — a May 24, 1943 sit-in strike and, later, participation in the April 1946 general strike (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3821, 3991).
Details
- The Association had voiced sporadic complaints about low salaries and lack of opportunity for promotion, but its members were disinclined to collective action, which conflicted with their self-image as an elite of educated and dedicated public servants, gentlemen to the core, who had little in common not only with wage workers but even with the much more numerous low-level “unclassified” government employees (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Chapter 7 note 69, lines 3821-3823).
- During the war a sharp decline in the civil servants’ status and salaries — absolutely, owing to inflation, and relatively, by comparison with white-collar employees at private companies — pushed them toward militancy; after numerous polite petitions and cordial but inconclusive meetings, the Arab and Jewish civil servants forced their reluctant leaders to act to win the cost of living allowance (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Chapter 7 note 69, lines 3821-3823).
- On May 24, 1943, some 7,000 government employees (about 5,000 of them Arabs) reported to work but refrained from eating, drinking and the performance of their usual duties, and also refused to shave; they intended to sit in for two days, but British police and soldiers expelled them on the first day, whereupon they paraded through city streets and held protest meetings in mosques, churches and synagogues; coverage of the sit-in strike, and especially its suppression, was heavily censored (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Chapter 7 note 69, lines 3821-3823).
- Soon after the strike the COLA was extended to cover the civil servants, but persistent inflation drove them to further protest in 1944-45 — several short countrywide protest strikes in spring 1945, which enjoyed Histadrut support — and then to participation in the general strike of government workers in the spring of 1946 (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Chapter 7 note 69, lines 3821-3823; line 3991).
- Lockman gives the best analysis of the civil servants’ situation and self-image as Rachelle Taqqu, “Arab Labor”, 250-69 (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Chapter 7 note 69, lines 3821-3823).
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, April 1946 general strike, Histadrut